BORIS DOES A MAGGIE

Johnson invokes ‘No alternative’ Mrs T mantra

BORIS Johnson invoked Margaret Thatcher yesterday as he emphatically slapped down demands for mass immigration to resolve the shortages crisis.

Triggering a major row with business, the Prime Minister repeated Mrs Thatcher’s famous mantra – ‘there is no alternative’ – and argued the country must move to a new economic model.

Mr Johnson said he was ‘not worried’ about the current labour shortages or rising prices, saying supply chains would sort themselves out ‘rapidly’.

And he said it was ‘not the job of government to try and fix every problem in business and industry’.

Instead, he said the economy was simply facing the ‘stresses and strains’ of surging demand in a post-Covid recovery and of ‘moving to a new approach’, with firms paying higher wages rather than relying on low paid immigration.

But last night there were signs of a split among Cabinet ministers over how much the government should intervene. One told the Daily Mail: ‘My colleagues who think we should step back and do nothing will quickly change their tune if we end up with empty shelves at Christmas.’

Mr Johnson will repeat that message in his conference speech today, insisting there can be no return to the days of pre-Brexit mass immigration.

He will tell activists in Manchester that the Government is ‘embarking now on the change of direction that has been long overdue in the UK economy’, adding: ‘We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity, all of it enabled and assisted by uncontrolled immigration.’ In television and radio interviews yesterday, Mr Johnson played down the prospect rising inflation could cancel out wage growth.

Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if there was a crisis, Mr Johnson said: ‘On the contrary, what you’re seeing with the UK economy, and indeed the global economy, is very largely – in the supply chains – the stresses and strains that you’d expect from a giant waking up, and that’s what’s happening.’

Mr Johnson has repeatedly refused to rule out shortages in the run-up to Christmas.

Gary Grant, the boss of toy shop chain The Entertainer, yesterday said Mr Johnson has ‘no idea what’s going on on the ground’.

‘There is no alternative’ is the phrase associated with Mrs Thatcher’s economic policy in the 1980s and gave rise to her nickname ‘Tina’.

In March 1981, taxes were put up even though the country was in recession.