London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

Johnson avoided mass rebellion over tax rise, but anger is growing

Johnson avoided mass rebellion over tax rise, but anger is growing

Analysis: As ‘red wall’ Tories fear unfair impact of NIC rise, No 10 knows social care battle is not yet over
For months, Boris Johnson’s plan to deliver on a pledge to solve the social care crisis was shrouded in secrecy: names were added one by one to a list held by the cabinet secretary of those brought in to develop parts of the policy so that in the event of a leak inquiry, he knew – in the words of one insider – “who to pin against the wall”.

Even the day before the announcement, many cabinet ministers were still in the dark. The key architects – the prime minister; the chancellor, Rishi Sunak; the health secretary, Sajid Javid – had been frantically negotiating a final settlement over the weekend that was just ambitious enough for their nervous colleagues to swallow.

But when the big reveal was finally made on Tuesday – a hike in national insurance raising £12bn a year and taking the tax burden to its highest ever level – the feared mass rebellion melted away.

Discussions around the cabinet were “wide-ranging” with some dissent expressed, cabinet sources admitted – but in the main, sceptical senior members of the government held their tongue, partly due to the dangled threat of an imminent reshuffle.

But despite the lack of any resignations, the anger among Conservative MPs whose affection their leader craves is growing and the looming danger for Johnson will only be compounded by a series of tricky issues over the coming weeks: introducing vaccine passports, cutting the universal credit £20 uplift and extending emergency powers granted under the Coronavirus Act.

“The PM’s moved one notch further down in quite a lot of people’s estimations,” a frontbencher conceded. “He won’t get unlimited chances. He’s going to try and make me eat shit for a number of things, having just made me eat shit over national insurance contributions (NICs) and I’ll probably let him off – but it won’t be forgotten.”

While Downing Street will have considered the week to have gone better than expected and are privately relaxed about restless MPs (so long as they remain anonymous, limiting the potency of such attacks), No 10 are wary the battle over social care is not yet over.

Labour has just regained a two-percentage-point lead over the Conservatives for the first time since January in a YouGov poll, and there are concerns the £12bn raised through the NICs increase will not eliminate the NHS backlog before the money is meant to begin shifting to social care in 2023. “Red wall” Tories have begun speaking openly about the unfair impact they expect the tax to have on poorer communities. And in the two years before the £86,000 social care costs cap comes into effect from October 2023, many people will lose their home – threatening yet more damaging headlines. As all those effects are felt, and the next general election draws closer, pressure on Johnson will grow.

Johnson had hoped to unveil the social care reforms before the summer recess in July. But that was put on hold when he and Sunak were forced into self-isolation. They had agreed a spending cut was not an option. “Rishi kept up the argument that it was his duty to leave public finances in a strong position for the next generation, so borrowing more would have been irresponsible,” a source with knowledge of the Treasury discussions said. “NICs was agreed pretty early on in the thinking that it was the only viable option to raise the quantity of money needed.”

The idea of badging the tax rise as a new “health and social care levy” was also agreed before the summer. Over the ensuing weeks, negotiations continued over the level at which it should be set, with Javid arguing for more spending, aided by hair-raising predictions that NHS waiting lists could balloon to 13 million.

Johnson’s team believed that while raising taxes – and directly breaking a manifesto promise – may be unpopular with voters, allowing millions of people to go without the treatment they needed would be a political disaster.

At least three cabinet ministers – Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss and David Frost – are understood to have voiced concerns at the Conservatives being at risk of losing their status as the party of lower taxation. However, the NICs rise wasn’t “enough of a red line” for them, several government sources admitted. One said the cabinet understood it was a personal priority for the prime minister, and that by raising NICs now, there were three years left in the run-up to the next election where Johnson and Sunak may look to cut taxes elsewhere.

In an attempt to shore up support before Wednesday’s vote, the prime minister rang around members of the 2019 Tory intake, among whom he has a huge amount of goodwill because they feel they owe their place in parliament directly to him. But some still rebelled, and more traditional Tories are becoming increasingly disfranchised.

“I’m thinking of joining the TaxPayers’ Alliance,” a senior government source said, in a reference to the lobbying group for lower taxes. Another insider said Johnson needed to “work out what post-pandemic Conservatism means – because if I was comparing this government with Harold Wilson’s [Labour government], there’s not much in it”.

A Downing Street source said Johnson came back to No 10 after announcing the policy and hearing MPs’ reactions on Tuesday and said: “Now we’ve got to get on with this, we’ve got to get it done: we’ve got to make sure that we spend every penny well and people get the treatment they need.”

Some Conservatives have also been buoyed up by what they see as Labour’s disarray over social care, with Keir Starmer criticising the NICs rise but unable to set out his own alternative.

A briefing pack given to Tory MPs defending the levy on the media rounds revealed the lines of questioning and attack they anticipated, however: “Isn’t this just piling costs on to businesses / effectively a jobs tax at a time when businesses are only just emerging from the pandemic? Why are you raising tax on hard-working people to subsidise the wealthy? Why don’t you use income tax which is more progressive and taxes broader sources of income?”

Apart from secrecy over the policy – which some said was the highest since the days of Brexit – another major factor in keeping would-be rebels on side was believed to be the suggestion of a reshuffle.

All-staff briefings in departments were planned, events introducing ministers were well-advanced and office space in No 10 was booked out – all on the presumption Johnson would carve out major changes to his top team on Thursday, which Downing Street did not deny at the start of the week.

It was dubbed the “heist of the century” by an official when the reshuffle failed to materialise. The fear among senior Conservatives is that the same threat will be dangled over their heads for weeks, or even months.

“We won’t keep our powder dry indefinitely,” one warned.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×