Commenting on Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s final speech at Conservative Party Conference 2021, Adam Smith Institute Head of Research Matthew Lesh says:

“Boris’ rhetoric was bombastic but vacuous and economically illiterate. This was an agenda for levelling down to a centrally-planned, high-tax, low-productivity economy. Boris is hamstringing the labour market, raising taxes on a fragile recovery and shying away from meaningful planning reform.

“Hiking the minimum wage risks locking the most vulnerable out of a job while increasing inflationary pressures.

“Shortages and rising prices simply cannot be blustered away with rhetoric about migrants. It’s reprehensible and wrong to claim that migrants make us poorer. There is no evidence that immigration lowers living standards for native workers. This dogwhistle shows that this Government doesn’t care about pursuing evidence-based policies. We can both control migration and allow migrants to fill skill gaps.

“‘Levelling up’ so far consists of little more than listing regions and their local produce. Boris throws out impressive-sounding economic terms like ‘pareto improvements’ to hide the fact that he lacks policies to drive growth.”

Notes to editors:

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The Adam Smith Institute is a free market, neoliberal think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.