Boris Johnson’s magic trick of cutting taxes and spending more should fool no one

Keir Starmer ought to have ‘won’ Prime Minister’s Questions on the cost of living, writes John Rentoul

Johnson does not deserve to survive, but he has defied logic before (Getty Images)

Boris Johnson’s pre-election pitch is so ridiculous that it might just work. At a rowdy Prime Minister’s Questions ahead of next week’s local elections, he claimed again to be cutting taxes and raising spending at the same time. It was a good thing that the chancellor wasn’t there.

The prime minister opened the Alice in Wonderland session by listing the government’s achievements in this parliamentary session, passing “more than 20 acts”, ignoring the record number of bills that ran out of time. One of those acts was to raise the threshold for national insurance contributions from July, which Johnson said was worth £330 a year, “the biggest single personal tax cut for a decade”.

This is an absurd claim, because the so-called tax cut comes three months into a tax year in which rates of national insurance have been raised. The rise in thresholds is worth more than the rise in rates for 70 per cent of workers, but the net result is not a record tax cut. And the overall tax burden is still rising, with the stealth increase in student loan repayments this year and the big increase in corporation tax next year.