By 2024 we’ll be paying off the pandemic deficit, and his Brexit delusions will be clear to all. His best chance may be during our post-vaccination euphoria
In this bleak, discontented midwinter, amid the roll call of Covid deaths, lockdown bankruptcies and lost jobs, no one is thinking about the next election, are they? Of course they are, because they always do.
But why? With a majority of 80 and Brexit “done”, Boris Johnson need not face the electorate for four years. Yet 2024 now looks like ominously bad election timing. In 2023-24 Britain will hit record peacetime borrowing, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Resolution Foundation warn. Both thinktanks predict that the run-up to the next scheduled general election will be marked by a hit to earnings and pressure on the government to balance the books – as the repercussions of both Covid and Brexit come home to roost on the Treasury roof.
