Tories’ 2019 NHS promises may come back to bite them

Voters are likely to feel as if public services have become worse rather than better since the last general election. Photograph: Sean Dempsey/PA Archive/PA Images

As the politician most closely associated with the “£350m a week for the NHS” Brexit bus, Boris Johnson went into the 2019 general election campaign making a series of big-spending promises on health, as well as education and policing.

Prof Rob Ford, of Manchester University, co-author of the definitive British General Elections of 2019 book, says these pledges were part of a strategy by the Tories to “neutralise” public services – where Labour tend to be strong – as an electoral issue.