BRASS TAX
BORIS JOHNSON appeared, on the surface at least, super-confident as parliament returned last week to tackle the vast backlog of challenges that Covid-19 has left piled high in ministerial in-trays across Whitehall.
On a visit to a care home in east London, the prime minister cheerfully clasped a mug saying Love Social Care before heading to the House of Commons to make a statement on how he proposed to fund the health and care systems out of the crises in which both are mired. But his characteristic ebullience hid a new determination in government, a new calculation.
The aim was to showcase a prime minister determined to govern, lead and finally tackle head-on the issue that his predecessors David Cameron and Theresa May, and Labour prime ministers before them, had ducked or messed up over previous decades. Politically that was one intended message, the other being that Keir Starmer and Labour still had no plan at all.
“This is
