To quote one hack, “there is a fine line in speeches between ‘wide-ranging’ and ‘scattergun'”. Boris’s speech in Blackpool today only just avoided the latter, though it at least proved less disastrous than his July 2021 speech given the new policies on right to buy for housing association tenants, a review into the mortgage market, and supercharging leaseholder reforms. No one can deny Boris’s rhetoric was on the money, that’s what he’s good at, we need to see results. The substance of government policy, especially on tax and spend, remains stubbornly Brownite…

Browsing through the checked-against-delivery text of the speech, we got:

“when you face inflationary pressure, you can’t just spend your way out of it. On the contrary, you have to be careful not to add to inflationary pressure.”

“when a country faces an inflationary problem, you can’t just pay more or spend more.”

“That won’t happen if we continue to apply the same mindset that we had during covid: that the answer to every problem is more state spending.”

“The overall burden of taxation is now very high – and sooner or later, and I would much rather it was sooner than later, that burden must come down.”

“The answer is economic growth. You can’t spend your way out of inflation, and you can’t tax your way into growth.”

There was a general consensus on social media: someone should tell all of this to the Prime Minister – especially if they had, for example, an 70-odd-seat majority…

As hacks wryly noted en masse:

• Harry Cole: “Who’s the new guy?”
• John Stevens: “If only he knew someone in government who could do something about that”
• Tom Harwood: “if only he had been in charge for the last two years!”
• Pippa Crerar: “Plenty of Tory MPs would quite like him to follow his own advice.”

Neither has it gone unnoticed that not only has the government stolen Labour’s spending solutions on cost-of-living support, Boris has also taken their local election slogan of “On Your Side” – saying it 10 times during the speech…