Boris Johnson’s NHS splurge is shameless electioneering – with the reckoning due only when Brexit is done

The painful irony is that Mr Johnson’s Brexit project will render success almost impossible for any efforts he makes to improve the heath service

Like an overstressed junior doctor running around the wards dishing out medicaments, Boris Johnson has spent a good deal of his first fortnight in office attending to the poor old National Health Service.

His tour of the wards and ambulance stations has a frenetic, almost panicky aspect to it, as if, just say, he was also concerned about patching up his party’s record on the NHS in the event of an early general election. His latest pledge is some £250m for artificial intelligence.

Leaving aside the obvious wisecracks that any Johnsonian involvement with intelligence, artificial or human, usually prompts, it is something that should help diagnosis, inform clinical decision-making, and free staff from administrative tasks in favour of “frontline” patient care.