Brexit changes difficult but worth it, insists Johnson

Manchester, UK, Oct 6 (EFE).- British prime minister Boris Johnson said “difficult” changes resulting from Brexit will take time but will eventually benefit the country as he promised to move “towards a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy.”

“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,” Johnson said in his closing speech at the Conservative Party Conference.

Promising to tackle “long term structural weaknesses”, he said his government is “dealing with the biggest underlying issues of our economy and society – the problems that no government has had the guts to tackle before”.

The prime minister said his government would introduce a new system that would “allow people of talent to come to this country, but not to use immigration as an excuse for failure to invest in people, in skills and in the equipment or machinery they need to do their jobs”.

He also used his speech to praise the speed and progress of the UK’s coronavirus vaccine rollout and his government’s handling of the pandemic.

The conference is being held amid a national fuel crisis caused by a shortage of truck drivers exacerbated by Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic.

The UK’s current driver shortage of around 100,000 workers has contributed to the supply shortages in the country’s grocery stores and its fuel pumps but the Conservatives insist that Brexit is not the cause. EFE

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