Boris Johnson hates U-turns – but there is one he is very tempted to make

Boris Johnson normally hates headlines including the word “U-turn”; his aides spend many hours denying a decision is a volte-face even when it patently is. However, there is one U-turn the prime minister is very tempted to make and celebrate: halting the 1.25 per cent increase in national insurance contributions due in April.

Right-wing Tories are trying to exploit Johnson’s new mantra: to do “whatever it takes” to hang on to power. He is preparing to toss them a few more bones, such as diluting the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill and proposed restrictions on junk food advertising in shops.

But right-wingers want “operation red meat” to include a giant, juicy T-bone steak – the national insurance rise. They are making it the price of their support for Johnson when his enemies move against him --probably, whenever Sue Gray’s report on “partygate” is finally published.

The Tory free-marketeers claim Rishi Sunak has enough room for manoeuvre to drop or postpone the rise and must do so to ease the cost-of-living crisis. Conveniently, a £13bn borrowing undershoot in the current financial year matches the £12bn annual revenue the increase would raise for health and social care.

The MPs are egged on by Tory peers David Frost and Theodore Agnew, who have both resigned as ministers; they want tax cuts funded by a blitz on “waste” but our old friend “efficiency savings” is not a reliable one after 10 years of austerity. “We have to find real money somewhere,” one Sunak ally told me.

His critics brand Sunak “unconservative” for hiking taxes to their highest level since the 1950s. But the chancellor is digging in against a last-minute U-turn, which he believes would shatter the Conservatives’ tablet of stone, fiscal responsibility.

He interprets that as keeping a lid on borrowing so as not to saddle future generations with debt. If the national insurance rise were postponed for a year – one option under consideration – it might never happen because that would be closer to the general election, which must be held by 2024.

In a government paralysed by Johnson’s struggle to survive, the tax debate has been heightened by the leadership question. Liz Truss, Sunak’s main rival in Westminster’s version of Succession, opposed the rise last summer, arguing that borrowing should take the strain. Her pitch in a leadership election would be a “go for growth” strategy based on tax cuts – music to the right.

The foreign secretary has been more supportive of Johnson in his hour of desperate need than the chancellor, whose lukewarm backing shows the PM’s critics he is keeping his distance. Just a little, but the message has been received.

There has been tension between Sunak and Johnson over who “owns” the national insurance rise ever since they agreed it last summer. As he fights for his political life, Johnson is less keen to own it than he was then, when he wanted to trumpet spending £12bn a year on tackling NHS backlogs and a bold reform of social care.

Now, his priority is not the public or public services but pandering to Tory MPs. He knows that many One Nation Tories would not back him in a vote of confidence and so he needs the support of the right, many of whom are disenchanted by what they see as a failure to seize the opportunities offered by Brexit. (Johnson will try to allay such fears next week).

Right-wingers insist they are worried about living standards but a fairer and more effective way to help those on low incomes would be to use any spare money to cushion the 50 per cent rise in energy bills in April. Delaying the national insurance move would hand most of the gains to the richest fifth of households, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

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If he forces his chancellor to U-turn, Johnson would claim the promised extra money would still go to health and social care. Cake-and-eat-it time again. But Sunak is right: halting the rise would be a panicky, wrong call. The NHS and care sector need the money guaranteed. They will need it permanently. Probably they will need even more, because of record waiting lists and the rising elderly population.

Without the national insurance rise, the Tories’ promise to “fix” social care would likely become yet another broken one on this issue. In turn, failing to invest in the already crumbling sector would pile even more pressure on the NHS. Oliver Dowden, the Tory chair, told the party’s MPs this week the next election would be decided by health and the cost of living; the Tories need to get both right.

Johnson and his ravenous backbenchers should think again about a national insurance U-turn; not being trusted on the NHS could cost the Tories the next election.