The Tories want to be the party of the NHS. Will voters buy it?

THE SUMMER after he ran the Brexit campaign, and two years before he was appointed the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings gave a talk to Nudgestock, a “festival of behavioural science”. At the event, put on by Ogilvy, an advertising agency, his analysis of the “core problems of the Tory party brand” was typically blunt. Almost all British people love the NHS. But most Tory MPs don’t care about it, he said—“and the public kind of has cottoned on to that.”

Under Mr Cummings’s guidance, Boris Johnson has deployed a combination of money and warm words to show he does care. Last year Theresa May, his predecessor in Downing Street, announced an extra £20bn ($26bn) a year by 2023 for the health service. Since taking charge Mr Johnson has promised £2.7bn more to build six hospitals, £2.4bn to boost primary care, and £1.8bn to refurbish facilities and buy new equipment. These announcements have been enthusiastically promoted. Ninety-six of Mr Johnson’s 659 tweets as prime minister have mentioned the NHS, and he has visited at least half a dozen hospitals.