Boris Johnson’s rather testy interview with Andrew Marr this morning revealed the political gamble that he is taking. Johnson is calculating that the electoral benefits of higher wages will cancel out the public irritation with supply chain issues caused by labour shortages. During the interview, he repeatedly stressed that he thought that the UK’s low wage growth and stagnant productivity was, in part, because of the UK’s use of cheap, imported labour and that he wasn’t going to go back to that ‘old failed model’.
When Andrew Marr pushed on how long these supply chain problems would go on for, Boris Johnson did not give a straight answer. So far, the government appears to have paid no political price for the petrol crunch. Whether the same will be true if Christmas is disrupted remains to be seen.
The beginning of the interview was dominated by the fallout from the sentencing of Wayne Couzens for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
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