THE Covid chickens are coming home to roost, folks – flocks of them heading for Downing Street, the Treasury and the NHS.

We are about to confront the vast bills piled up during the pandemic with not a brass farthing in the Treasury kitty to meet them.

Free-spending Boris Johnson is going to rip up the election promises he made to Tory voters who put him in No 10 less than two years ago.

Hardworking families and struggling firms will be hammered by a “jobs tax”, just as unemployment was beginning to recover.

This is the price Downing Street has decided we must pay for unrestrained spending unleashed during our 18-month battle with Covid, and getting a grip on social care.

National Insurance contributions, or NICs — income tax by another name — will jump by between one and two per cent, depending who wins the war now raging in No 10. The compromise might end up being 1.25 per cent.

That would cost hard-working families on average pay of £20,000 — including Sun readers and Red Wall voters – around £130 a year. For those on £54,000 a year, like the new breed of HGV drivers, the hike will be nearer to £500.

Those figures would rise still further if the increase is a whopping two per cent, the sum reportedly being demanded by health supremo Sajid Javid to help cope with the 5.5million NHS patient backlog. Without it, “The Saj” is said to predict this queue will more than double to 13million, crippling the NHS.

Elderly and infirm

Meanwhile, the PM needs the tax hike to fund another multibillion-pound election promise — a long-term social care plan for an ever-expanding army of elderly and infirm.

Tens of thousands have seen their life savings evaporate, forced to sell off their homes to pay for residential bills averaging £50,000 a year.

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Boris claims he has a detailed plan, but nobody has a clue how it will work.
Early indicators suggest homeowners will be allowed to keep assets worth between £60,000 and £100,000.

The result? The poor will pay through higher NICs to protect the wealthy.
Yet there is apparently no plan for a long-overdue shake-up of the whole social care system — one of the hardest hit by the Covid pandemic.

The clamour for cash is a gigantic headache for Chancellor Rishi Sunak,already struggling under ballooning national debt.

A bitter Cabinet war is raging between the PM and Tory ministers appalled by a tax-and-spending splurge usually associated with the Labour Left.

One senior Tory warned: “Every day, all we hear is ‘tax, tax, tax, tax’. It’s like the Charge of the Tax Brigade.

Boris claims he has a detailed plan, but nobody has a clue how it will work.

“Road taxes, green taxes, social care taxes . . . even a nappy tax has been floated. It feels like we are just hammering ordinary working people.” Seven senior ministers are lining up behind the Chancellor against breaking the manifesto pledges that won them an 80-seat majority in 2019.

They fear the money will be gobbled up in pay rises, rather than extra staff, facilities and equipment — just as it was when Tony Blair’s Labour government pioneered the NHS tax.

The Covid pandemic is at the heart of this crisis, crippling parts of the economy and putting the NHS under strain. At its height, with the Prime Minister himself close to death, the Government unleashed a flood of taxpayers’ money to save lives.

Money was hurled at health and clinical services, emergency pay rises and funding for local authorities. Some of it was wisely spent. Much of it was wasted on questionable investments, which will be the subject of a major public inquiry next year.

Billions were targeted on emergency protective kit to cope with skyrocketing infections and hospital admission numbers. More went on job-saving furlough schemes and help for struggling firms. Vast sums were syphoned off by cheating chancers or grabbed by unscrupulous firms with no health industry experience.

Amid a bedlam of conflicting demands there was the inspired scramble for life-saving vaccines which gave Britain such a boost last December. Less impressive was the £40billion soaked up by the controversial test-and-trace system still clogging the wheels of commerce and foreign travel.

‘Being hoodwinked’

For better or worse, Britain today is in the red to the tune of £3TRILLION, including £700billion in digital cash — quantitative easing — from the Bank of England.

The NICs shambles was slammed yesterday by firms and economists.

“Breaking a manifesto promise by increasing NICs just as firms are struggling to get back on their feet would be devastating for small business and local communities,” says the Federation of Small Businesses.

“NICs are a jobs tax. Fewer jobs will be created.” The Taxpayers’ Alliance warns a hike in NICs would hit workers with the “highest bills in a generation”.

“Taxpayers will not tolerate being hoodwinked into yet more Tory tax rises,” it says.

Both comments sum up the dilemma facing this Government. Boris Johnson may be able to dance away from the sort of scandals and ministerial crises that would seriously damage any other PM.

By breaking the promises that put him in power, Boris is putting that reputation through the shredder.

He is helped by the uselessness of the Starmer-led Labour Party.

But Tory governments are expected to know how to run an economy. That’s why they win elections.

By breaking the promises that put him in power, Boris is putting that reputation through the shredder.

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