Manchester: Empty gas pumps, shortage of staff, empty space on store shelves. It is an autumn of discomfort in Britain, if not a winter of discontent.
but this week boris johnson is in its element. Inside a sprawling convention center in Manchester, the prime minister shrugs off his problems during the Conservative Party’s annual convention, speaking to the supportive crowd, posing for selfies and riding a bicycle.
Johnson concluded the four-day conference on Wednesday with a speech promising that Britain would emerge from Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic a stronger, more dynamic country – even if the road was a bit rocky.
“There is no choice,” Johnson said on Tuesday, adopting a phrase used by former Prime Minister Margaret thatcher, an iconic figure for the Conservatives. “The UK has got to (be) – and we can do much, much better – by becoming a high-wage, high-productivity economy.”
Britain has been going through a turbulent time since the party’s last meeting two years ago. Then, Johnson vowed to “get Brexit done” and struggled for terms of exit after years of pulling Britain out of the European Union.
That promise got Johnson a massive parliamentary majority in December 2019. He pulled Britain out of the European Union last year, ending the uninterrupted economic integration of the UK with a trading bloc of nearly half a billion people. Britain has also been battling a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 136,000 people in Britain, Europe’s highest toll after Russia.
The pandemic, which put much of the economy on ice, and Brexit, which made it harder for EU citizens to work in the UK, combined to throw the economy out of sync.
While not as dire as Britain’s infamous “Winter of Discontent” in 1978-79, when thousands of striking workers paralyzed essential services and led to Thatcher’s election, the country has seen the most widespread economic disruption in years.
A shortage of truck drivers, partly due to a testing backlog and partly due to the exodus of European workers, has hit British supply chains. This has left supermarkets with few empty shelves, fast-food chains without chicken and fuel-to-gas pumps.
After more than a week of fuel supply problems, the government this week called in the military, calling in hundreds of soldiers to steer tanker trucks. It also says it will issue 5,500 short-term visas for foreign truck drivers to come to the UK
Other struggling parts of the economy say they are not getting the same quick action. Pig farmers protested outside the Conservative convention, saying the lack of slaughterhouses could mean thousands of pigs slaughtered on farms end up in landfills instead of down the food chain.
Merrill Ward, a pig farmer in central England, said it was “absolute insanity” that the government was refusing to issue visas to a small number of skilled European butchers to ease the crisis.
“It’s a complete and utter waste,” she said.
Johnson says businesses will have to make it harder by raising wages, improving pay and conditions for British workers to fill vacant jobs. He said that many sectors of the British economy depend on Eastern European workers who are willing to work hard for low pay, and vowed that the UK “won’t go back to the old, failed model where you can get low-wage, low-skilled”. Mainline labor.”
While Johnson argues that EU membership has lowered UK wages – a claim many economists claim – he has downplayed the role of Brexit in the country’s current economic crisis, pointing out that the United There is also a shortage of truck drivers in the US and China. Critics say the gaps on supermarket shelves in countries that Britain is experiencing are not even there.
Johnson said the supply-chain problems are just “the tension and stress you would expect from a huge wake-up call,” adding that Britain is rapidly rebounding after suffering the sharpest contraction of any major economy in the pandemic. Unemployment is less than 5%, although the end of a program that paid the wages of millions of furloughed workers later this month could push that number up.
Many conservatives are concerned that the global surge in natural gas prices in the winter could hit voters’ pockets by rising fuel costs and cutting welfare benefits for millions.
This could make it harder for Johnson to meet his key goal of “flattening” the UK by spreading economic opportunity beyond the south of England, where most business and investment is concentrated. That promise helped him win working class votes in areas that had long been centre-left strongholds labor party.
“The Conservative Party has changed,” said Michael GoveThe government’s grandly titled Secretary of State for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities.
He said the party, which reduced public spending for a decade after 2010 under Johnson’s predecessors, had rejected an economic model “in which the fruits of growth were not shared equally and talents of all were equally shared.” was not given importance.”
One day, voters will decide whether the Conservatives have kept their promises. But for now, most opinion polls gave the party an edge over a dismayed Labor Party, with delegates in Manchester cheering on its famously irrepressible leader.
They packed meeting halls and sipped hot white wine at sweaty receptions, as if Britain’s pandemic-stricken months of lockdown, masks and social distancing were a nightmare.
The Conservative Party led by Johnson was over the years younger, more diverse and less dominant than the affluent residents of southern England.
“You wouldn’t even have seen it 10, 15 years ago, the North coming out in such a crowd to support the Conservative Party,” Max Darby, a representative who was born in the town of Scunthorpe in northern England. “I think Boris must be doing something right if people like me are happy – really proud – to vote for the Conservatives.”
but this week boris johnson is in its element. Inside a sprawling convention center in Manchester, the prime minister shrugs off his problems during the Conservative Party’s annual convention, speaking to the supportive crowd, posing for selfies and riding a bicycle.
Johnson concluded the four-day conference on Wednesday with a speech promising that Britain would emerge from Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic a stronger, more dynamic country – even if the road was a bit rocky.
“There is no choice,” Johnson said on Tuesday, adopting a phrase used by former Prime Minister Margaret thatcher, an iconic figure for the Conservatives. “The UK has got to (be) – and we can do much, much better – by becoming a high-wage, high-productivity economy.”
Britain has been going through a turbulent time since the party’s last meeting two years ago. Then, Johnson vowed to “get Brexit done” and struggled for terms of exit after years of pulling Britain out of the European Union.
That promise got Johnson a massive parliamentary majority in December 2019. He pulled Britain out of the European Union last year, ending the uninterrupted economic integration of the UK with a trading bloc of nearly half a billion people. Britain has also been battling a coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 136,000 people in Britain, Europe’s highest toll after Russia.
The pandemic, which put much of the economy on ice, and Brexit, which made it harder for EU citizens to work in the UK, combined to throw the economy out of sync.
While not as dire as Britain’s infamous “Winter of Discontent” in 1978-79, when thousands of striking workers paralyzed essential services and led to Thatcher’s election, the country has seen the most widespread economic disruption in years.
A shortage of truck drivers, partly due to a testing backlog and partly due to the exodus of European workers, has hit British supply chains. This has left supermarkets with few empty shelves, fast-food chains without chicken and fuel-to-gas pumps.
After more than a week of fuel supply problems, the government this week called in the military, calling in hundreds of soldiers to steer tanker trucks. It also says it will issue 5,500 short-term visas for foreign truck drivers to come to the UK
Other struggling parts of the economy say they are not getting the same quick action. Pig farmers protested outside the Conservative convention, saying the lack of slaughterhouses could mean thousands of pigs slaughtered on farms end up in landfills instead of down the food chain.
Merrill Ward, a pig farmer in central England, said it was “absolute insanity” that the government was refusing to issue visas to a small number of skilled European butchers to ease the crisis.
“It’s a complete and utter waste,” she said.
Johnson says businesses will have to make it harder by raising wages, improving pay and conditions for British workers to fill vacant jobs. He said that many sectors of the British economy depend on Eastern European workers who are willing to work hard for low pay, and vowed that the UK “won’t go back to the old, failed model where you can get low-wage, low-skilled”. Mainline labor.”
While Johnson argues that EU membership has lowered UK wages – a claim many economists claim – he has downplayed the role of Brexit in the country’s current economic crisis, pointing out that the United There is also a shortage of truck drivers in the US and China. Critics say the gaps on supermarket shelves in countries that Britain is experiencing are not even there.
Johnson said the supply-chain problems are just “the tension and stress you would expect from a huge wake-up call,” adding that Britain is rapidly rebounding after suffering the sharpest contraction of any major economy in the pandemic. Unemployment is less than 5%, although the end of a program that paid the wages of millions of furloughed workers later this month could push that number up.
Many conservatives are concerned that the global surge in natural gas prices in the winter could hit voters’ pockets by rising fuel costs and cutting welfare benefits for millions.
This could make it harder for Johnson to meet his key goal of “flattening” the UK by spreading economic opportunity beyond the south of England, where most business and investment is concentrated. That promise helped him win working class votes in areas that had long been centre-left strongholds labor party.
“The Conservative Party has changed,” said Michael GoveThe government’s grandly titled Secretary of State for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities.
He said the party, which reduced public spending for a decade after 2010 under Johnson’s predecessors, had rejected an economic model “in which the fruits of growth were not shared equally and talents of all were equally shared.” was not given importance.”
One day, voters will decide whether the Conservatives have kept their promises. But for now, most opinion polls gave the party an edge over a dismayed Labor Party, with delegates in Manchester cheering on its famously irrepressible leader.
They packed meeting halls and sipped hot white wine at sweaty receptions, as if Britain’s pandemic-stricken months of lockdown, masks and social distancing were a nightmare.
The Conservative Party led by Johnson was over the years younger, more diverse and less dominant than the affluent residents of southern England.
“You wouldn’t even have seen it 10, 15 years ago, the North coming out in such a crowd to support the Conservative Party,” Max Darby, a representative who was born in the town of Scunthorpe in northern England. “I think Boris must be doing something right if people like me are happy – really proud – to vote for the Conservatives.”
.