Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday sought to reset his embattled leadership with vows to tackle Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, including contentious new measures to boost home ownership. After narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote among his own Conservative MPs on Monday, Johnson is under pressure to turn the page on a series of scandals including lockdown-breaching parties in Downing Street. In a speech in Blackpool, northwest England, he promised new reforms “to help people cut costs in every area of household expenditure — from food to energy to childcare to transport and housing”. “This government is on the side of the British public in coping with those pressures,” Johnson insisted. The scale of the inflationary crisis hitting millions of Britons was underlined as the price of filling up the average family car topped £100 ($125) for the first time, according to the RAC motoring group. RAC spokesman Simon Williams called it “a truly dark day” for hard-pressed drivers, and urged the government to slash sales tax on petrol and diesel. Johnson said much of the crisis was caused by factors beyond the government’s control, such as the impact of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.