Conservative wins mean Boris Johnson has to deliver on ‘levelling up’

Editorial: The prime minister is benefiting from the success of the vaccination programme, but there are parts of the UK that his vote-winning skill cannot reach

Winning in Hartlepool doesn’t necessarily mean Boris Johnson will go ‘on and on and on’ as prime minister (AP)

For a government approaching what would normally be its midterm blues, the Conservatives had a good day at the polls on Thursday. The symbol of that was Hartlepool, only the fifth time the government has gained a seat from the opposition at a by-election since the war.

Even if Hartlepool was a one-off, Conservative gains in local elections in Leave-voting areas across the country, but especially in the north and Midlands, and the retention of the mayoralties of the West Midlands and Tees Valley were strong results. Both the BBC and Sky News estimated that the Conservatives were ahead of Labour in the national equivalent share of the vote.

This has prompted some crowing among cabinet ministers, who have taken to suggesting that Boris Johnson could serve as prime minister for longer than Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years “if he wants”, on the grounds that he has secured a “permanent” rejection of Labour by the voters.

Not that any minister has been foolish enough to put their name to such a prediction publicly. They must know that such triumphalism is unwise. They know that Mr Johnson was so unpopular towards the end of last year that there was gossip among some Conservative MPs of a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Of course, that was wild and empty talk, driven by a passionate opposition on the back benches to coronavirus restrictions; but today’s exaltation of Mr Johnson is almost as premature.

The prime minister is benefiting from the success of the vaccination programme, and probably from the widespread relief at the easing of restrictions. He has shown a mercurial cunning in portraying himself as the champion of the Leave-voting working class while retaining some of the broad support he enjoyed as a pro-immigration, socially liberal mayor of a Remainer world city.

But there are parts that his vote-winning skill cannot reach. He remains deeply unpopular in Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon is one of the few politicians who can match him for sheer guile, winning a fourth term in government for the Scottish National Party on a domestic record that is frankly dismal.

If Ms Sturgeon enjoyed a Covid-incumbency bonus in Scotland as Mr Johnson did in England, then Mark Drakeford did likewise in Wales for Labour. All three have emerged from their handling of the crisis with some credit, even if Mr Johnson’s credit is mostly recent and vaccine-driven.

It is the Scottish result that is fraught with the most danger for Mr Johnson. He is quite right to say that now is not the time for another referendum on independence, and to point out that Ms Sturgeon says so too, knowing that the Scottish people want her to focus on coronavirus and the recovery from it. But the prime minister must be careful not to allow his language to harden into a form of words that sounds as if it denies the Scottish people the right, ultimately, to decide their future.

If Mr Johnson can hold that line, though, he has a harder challenge ahead. His talk of levelling up and uniting the country has worked a treat so far. His ability to hold together the winning electoral coalition of the working-class north and the prosperous south has been a conjuring trick pulled off with the smoke of Brexit and the mirror of fine words. But now he has to deliver.

He is about to deliver a “major speech” on levelling up, we are told. That is not enough and will not be enough by the time of the next general election to convince the voters who turned out for him on Thursday that levelling up is more than just an empty promise.