Campaign Charlies

The Conservatives finally make an election pledge for universities, and it’s a doozy.

On a day when the election headlines were dominated by visits from politicians to flood-stricken parts of Britain, Boris Johnson made his first set-piece speech and promised to increase the research and innovation budget to £18bn. In a campaign characterised by exorbitant spending pledges, that’s quite the eye-catcher.

Speaking in a half-empty electric vehicles factory in Coventry, Johnson said, “We will double funding for research and development to £18bn in the next parliament – the biggest ever increase in support for R and D”. That chimes with the level of ambition that Dominic Cummings had been briefing to journalists in the weeks leading up to the Conservative Party conference in October.