North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll has accused Boris Johnson of operating a “political ponzi scheme” after the Prime Minister survived a confidence vote from his MPs but suffered huge political damage.
In an interview with radio station LBC, Mr Driscoll said the Prime Minister made increasing promises to the public that could never be met but that his operations had “run out of steam”. The mayor was speaking after the Prime Minister won a confidence vote from the Conservative parliamentary party but saw 148 of his MPs vote against him. Mr Johnson and other Cabinet ministers have called on the party to move on, but rebel MPs and some political commentators have warned that the Prime Minister’s authority has been too damaged for him to carry on.
Mr Driscoll said: “There’s an inexorable force that occurs in politics which is that if people haven’t got money in their pockets, they’re unhappy with the Government. If it was just cake, I think Boris Johnson would have survived. But it’s not. Before that we had the wallpaper scandal, before that we had the covering up of the corruption of Owen Paterson, which is what’s done more damage in the longer term.
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“We’ve had this Boris Ponzi scheme where he promises something, gets into power and doesn’t deliver it, so he promises even more and even more. And when you’re facing a political ponzi scheme, it’s going to run out of steam in the end.”
Later in the interview, Mr Driscoll outlined how he thought Labour could benefit from the Conservatives’ problems, insisting the party must offer voters a better option.
He said: “It’s time to be showing an alternative, what Labour would do if it was in power. Me and the other Labour mayors were speaking about this to Keir a week or two ago. Labour’s been out of power for a long time, but I haven’t, and Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram and Tracy Brabin haven’t. We’re all delivering - I’m 10 years ahead of the Government’s targets on job creation.
“If the Labour party was to come out and say not just “the guy’s a liar, we want rid of him” because I think that’s already established. But we should say: this is how we would fix the cost-of-living crisis, this is how we would sort the transport chaos, this is how we would sort the climate crisis. That’s what people want to hear - an alternative policy platform and what we would do in Government.”
As he attempted to draw a line under the troubles, Mr Johnson has today said he would cut taxes and drive down the cost of government. In an attempt to address criticism of his economic policies, Mr Johnson said the “fundamental Conservative instinct” was to allow people to decide how to spend their money, urging Cabinet ministers to cut costs.
He said “delivering tax cuts” would help deliver “considerable growth in employment and economic progress”.
He told ministers: “Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to ask everybody to come forward with ways in which we cut costs, drive reform, and make sure that we understand that in the end it is people who have the best feel for how to spend their own money rather than the government or the state. And that is our fundamental, Conservative instinct.”
Allies have rallied round Mr Johnson, but former Tory leader Lord Hague said “the damage done to his premiership is severe” and he should quit rather than prolong the agony. Mr Johnson’s authority faces further blows with tricky by-elections on June 23 in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and Tiverton and Honiton in Devon.
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