Time is running out for the Tories to meet their promises

Will the Conservatives have much evidence that they’ve helped the country recover from the pandemic by the next election? Even though all the indications are that the party will go for a later poll in 2024, they still do not have much time to fix the big holes that have gaped wider as a result of Covid. In many cases, such as the NHS backlog, the holes were already there before the pandemic, which makes them even harder to close up.

Education is another policy area where the rhetoric and time left to fulfil it just don’t seem to match up. This morning I asked Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi on Times Radio when he expected school children to have caught up the learning and attainment they lost as a result of lockdown. He said: ‘My pledge to everyone listening to this programme is we will continue to make sure children are caught up by the end of this Parliament. I’ve got £5 billion to do that with. If I need more, I’ll go back and ask for more.’

He might ask, but would he really get more money when his department is competing with the NHS, as well as demands for higher defence spending as a result of the war in Ukraine, and with panic in No. 10 about help for families coping with the rising cost of living? Certain ministers have been urging greater spending restraint and it is hard to see a future that doesn’t involve a return to austerity, if not by stealth as inflation makes government money worth less.

Perhaps the solution for education is better implementation of existing policies. The Education Select Committee recently published a stinging assessment of the National Tutoring Programme, both in terms of the contract with Randstad, the company that administers it, and the ‘spaghetti junction of funding’ which has led to the programme reaching around 15 per cent of its overall target to deliver tuition to 2 million children.

Either way, it’s hard to imagine Zahawi getting more money or meeting that target by the next election. At the moment, the rising cost of living is the top worry of voters, surpassing even the NHS. By the next election, the Tories may have to explain to voters why their lives feel much harder and more expensive, why their relatives are still on an NHS waiting list (or indeed have died on one) and why their children are still behind at school. That’s quite a contrast to the sunlit uplands Boris Johnson had expected to be frolicking in when voters go to the polls again.