In just two months, Boris Johnson’s election campaign promises have already crumbled to pieces

Editorial: As the government is slowly learning, sound bites are easy enough to deliver but translating them into concrete strategies and plans is rather more difficult

The staffing crisis facing the NHS and social care sector was already acute long before Boris Johnson came up with his eye-catching plan to boost nursing staffing (Reuters)

First, we witnessed the emasculation of HM Treasury as the engine room of government, in favour of the detested, shambling, muttering dictatorship of Dominic Cummings. Then, in a tragi-comic diversion, the recruitment, and rapid resignation, of a Downing Street “weirdo” adviser, Andrew Sabisky, who had written controversially about race and intelligence.

Swiftly following the brief Sabisky affair came serious allegations of the bullying of senior officials by Priti Patel, the home secretary. Now, as The Independent reports, civil servants at the Department of Health are expressing deep scepticism about the government’s pledge to “recruit” (to use a broad term) 50,000 nurses.

Two months after they won a famous election victory, the wheels on the machinery of the Johnson administration seem to be wobbling, if not actually falling off.