ABSTRACT
Few British governments display their credentials as swiftly as has that of Boris Johnson. Johnson had never publicly championed his party’s much-vaunted austerity with public money. By mid-summer 2020, the Johnson government was financing half Britain’s private-sector workforce, with a million firms receiving state subsidy. Likewise, public utilities are operating under government licence and financial control, what economists call parastatals. The revenues of construction companies are dominated by public infrastructure contracts and housing subsidies. The pandemic was not the only stimulus of a more active role for the state under Johnson. Johnson’s intention was to remove them from local accountability and nationalise them under the NHS, to create one national care bureaucracy, for a service that by its nature needs sensitivity to local conditions. Johnson’s contempt for localism, despite his mayor background, is shameless. His actions follow his instincts, to concentrate ever more power in one person, the Prime Minister.
