Next week, the United Kingdom will have a new prime minister. Unless all polling and indicators are incorrect, it will be Boris Johnson. The former mayor of London is far more popular than his opponent among Conservative Party members and has been the favorite since the race began, but the Tory leadership has still gone through the motions of a lengthy campaign, with Johnson and his rival, Jeremy Hunt, touring the country, each setting out their policy platform. Both have focused overwhelmingly on Brexit, and each debate is dominated by discussion on how the UK should leave the European Union.

Brexit has sucked the oxygen out of politics for years now, but the prime minister will still have to deal with other political issues, attempt to steer the economy, and manage public finances. Both Johnson and Hunt have committed to some spending commitments; Johnson’s key pledge is to increase the number of police officers by twenty thousand to deal with violent crime. The £1.1 billion policy is revealing in its hypocrisy: police numbers have fallen by twenty thousand since 2010 due to cuts to police budgets that Johnson repeatedly voted for. The number sounds large but merely reverses the austerity measures put in place by the Conservatives, and even police chiefs have dismissed the policy, pointing out that investing in technology is more likely to combat violent crime, and that recruitment is time-consuming and difficult.

The Conservatives have repeatedly claimed the austerity era that began in 2010 is over. That claim was never true, and despite Johnson’s offer of police cash, he is unlikely to reverse the cuts to every department in government as prime minister. But his weekly column in the Telegraph reveals that a Johnson government will be even harsher on social issues and funding. Writing this week, Johnson argued that the best response to mental health problems was work, and that in his first budget as prime minister, he would offer tax breaks to companies to spend on mental health provisions. Johnson pointed to the example of Winston Churchill, who suffered from depression but remained in work, as purported proof of the fact that employment is the panacea for the country’s huge mental-health crisis.