Businesses saw right through Johnson’s bombast, but will Sunak?

The PM's Thatcherite conference speech ignored many realities that will have to be addressed in this month's budget

Boris Johnson threw a mishmash of wishful economic thinking at the Conservative party conference wall last week and his advisers will spend this weekend hunkered down in No 10 hoping some of it will stick. Early signs are not good. Only hours after the prime minister stepped off the podium, the rightwing Adam Smith Institute thinktank called his rhetoric bombastic but vacuous and economically illiterate". It was typical of reaction throughout the business community.

According to Johnson-omics, Britain will emerge fitter, happier and more productive once the prime minister's limits on foreign labour have forced domestic employers to ramp up wages. Never mind that academic research finds little correlation between immigration and average pay. More immediately, he is ignoring the factory owners who are slamming on the brakes in response to shortages of key components, and the building firms downing tools for lack of concrete and steel. And what of concerns that rising gas and food prices are likely to send inflation well above the 4%-4.5% peak expected by the Bank of England?