Getting down to levelling up
It is often assumed that Britain’s Conservatives are on the same journey as the US Republicans, shifting their voter base and political priorities downwards from the comfortable to the coping. There are certainly overlaps but the Republican shift seems driven more by culture, even ethnicity, than it is here. Indeed, the difference can be summed up in those two words Boris Johnson keeps repeating: levelling up. Trumpism, the erratic billionaire populism, did not seek to level. Leaning left on economics was briefly a plausible direction in the Steve Bannon era. But it never materialised. By contrast, the Tory tilt towards Brexitey, just-about-managing Britain, appears to be led as much by
