How Boris Johnson’s mission to ‘level up’ the country is over before it began

Red wall Tories desperate to show promises delivered should be worried after the mini-budget, writes Rob Merrick

The PM’s levelling up idea has hit the buffers (Getty)

So, farewell then to hopes for Boris Johnson’s headline-grabbing promise to “level up” the country, a plan only two months old but strangled at birth it seems.

The dust has barely settled on the mammoth document unveiled by Michael Gove, with the hopes of all those red wall Tories in vulnerable marginal seats firmly pinned to its 332 pages.

But less than nine weeks later there appears to be no real intention to confront the nation’s stark inequalities in the only department that could deliver it: the Treasury.