Johnson aims to consolidate his lead in polls

Bloomberg

UK prime minister Boris Johnson is aiming to consolidate his lead in the polls in the final weeks of the general election campaign.
He announced a safety-first policy package based on “sensible” promises, which included hiring 50,000 nurses for the country’s cherished National Health Service and cutting taxes for working people.
Johnson carefully avoided the radical language and out-of-the-blue policy announcements that derailed his predecessor Theresa May’s campaign in 2017.
There was one big condition Johnson said must be met first — to deliver Brexit and end years of deadlock and division over the UK’s divorce from the European Union.
The only way of ending the trauma, Johnson claimed, was to pass his exit deal by electing a majority Conservative government on December 12.
“For the last three and a half years, this country has felt trapped, like a lion in a cage,” Johnson wrote in the introduction to the 59-page manifesto. “With a new parliament and a sensible majority government, we can get that deal through in days.”

Brexit Pledge
Johnson won the leadership of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party in July with a pledge to deliver Brexit by October 31. But despite negotiating a new agreement with the EU, he failed to persuade lawmakers in London to rush the divorce contract into law to meet his deadline.
The prime minister eventually persuaded parliament to trigger a snap election instead.
The campaign has turned into a clash between Johnson, who is promising to “get Brexit done” and move on, and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is vowing to tax the rich and spend on nationalising swaths of industry and boosting public services.
While Johnson’s manifesto outlined a relatively modest investment plan and promised tax cuts, Corbyn proposed an 83 billion-pound ($107 billion) spending programme to be paid for by tax increases.
The prime minister described the agenda put forward by the Labour leader and his finance spokesman John McDonnell as “madness” and “a recipe for chaos.”
“All Labour governments end with an economic crisis,” Johnson told an enthusiastic audience of activists who’d travelled through the fog to the manifesto launch in Telford, central England.
“The only difference I can see with Corbyn and McDonnell is they want to start with an economic crisis.”
Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said he was “disappointed” in the Conservatives’ commitment not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance.