Boris Johnson arrives with Carrie for big Tory conference speech TODAY

Boris Johnson invoked Margaret Thatcher today as he defending tax hikes to pay for the NHS and social care – as he faced down business fury over supply chain chaos.     

In his keynote speech, the PM delivered a defiant message that, unlike predecessors David Cameron and Theresa May, he has the ‘guts’ to push ahead with big reforms. 

He insisted there is ‘no alternative’ to shifting from a ‘broken’ immigration-reliant economy to a high wage, high skill one after Brexit.

And he said that his predecessor Lady Thatcher would not have kept borrowing after the ‘meteorite’ of the pandemic left the health service under massive strain and national debt over £2trillion. 

He said ‘structural change’ is the way to resolve the problems the country was facing as he pushed his reform plans. 

Mr Johnson announced a £3,000 ‘Levelling Up’ premium for talented maths physics chemistry teachers to go and work in deprived areas. 

But he did try to soothe anxiety in Tory ranks by saying he wanted there to be ‘low tax’ in the longer term. 

Mr Johnson opened by telling the party faithful he was pleased to be back ‘cheek by jowl’ and the country had opened up ‘faster than any other major economy in the world’. 

He said that was down to the ‘unbeatable’ NHS – and referred to his experience in hospital as his life hung in the balance.

Mr Johnson set out the scale of the challenge the country faces, with warning that NHS waiting lists will ‘go up before they come down’ as the end of the pandemic unleashes ‘a tide of anxiety’ about health concerns.  

However, Mr Johnson is facing growing unrest over his blunt denial that the country is in ‘crisis’ with petrol stations running dry, spiking inflation and labour shortages. Amid warnings that Christmas could be ruined once again, he has argued it is ‘not his job’ to ‘fix’ all the problems for industry. 

Mr Johnson told party members his changes to the economy after Brexit will at times be ‘difficult’ but insisted they will result in a fairer ‘low tax’ system. 

He said: ‘That’s the direction in which the country is going now – towards a high-wage, high-skilled, high-productivity and, yes, thereby a low-tax economy. That is what the people of this country need and deserve.

‘Yes, it will take time, and sometimes it will be difficult, but that is the change that people voted for in 2016.’

He added: ‘To deliver that change we will get on with our job of uniting and levelling up across the UK – the greatest project that any government can embark on.’ 

Mr Johnson said a ‘tide of anxiety’ is washing into A&E departments and GP practices, as he defended his multi-billion pound tax hike to pay for NHS and social care.

He recalled lying in a hospital bed last year and seeing a hole in the ground, noting: ‘They seemed to be digging a hole for something or indeed someone, possibly me.

‘But the NHS saved me and our wonderful nurses pulled my chestnuts out of that Tartarian pit, and I went back on a visit the other day and I saw that the hole had been filled in with three or four gleaming storeys of a new paediatrics unit.

‘There you have a metaphor for how we must build back better now. We have a huge hole in the public finances, we spent £407billion on Covid support and our debt now stands at over £2 trillion, and waiting lists will almost certainly go up before they come down.

‘Covid pushed out the great bow wave of cases and people did not or could not seek help, and that wave is now coming back – a tide of anxiety washing into every A&E and every GP.

‘Your hip replacement, your mother’s surgery and this is the priority of the British people.’

Mr Johnson’s speech was littered with jokes, including one about Michael Gove’s dancing in an Aberdeen nightclub.

‘Let’s here it for Jon Bon Govey,’ the Prime Minister told the conference hall.

He continued: ‘How have we managed to open up ahead of so many of our friends?

‘The answer is because of the rollout of that vaccine, a UK phenomenon, the magic potion invented in Oxford University … distributed at incredible speeds to vaccination centres everywhere.

‘We vaccinated so rapidly that we were able to do those crucial groups one to four, the oldest and most vulnerable, faster than any other major economy in the world.

‘Although the disease as sadly not gone away, the impact on death rates has been astonishing.’

He urged those present to ‘get’ a jab and invited them ‘try’ a so-called ‘fist pump’ with their neighbour. 

The Tories have been holding their first in-person conference since the 2019 general election, after the pandemic wreaked havoc on normal life.

But the proceedings have been largely dominated by events elsewhere, with petrol stations running dry and worries about labour shortages in crucial sectors causing months of misery. 

Cabinet ministers are behind the premier on the need to push ahead with change, although they admit that 

But there is increasing unrest about huge tax rises being brought in to bail out the NHS and social care. 

Senior figures also fear ‘complacency’ over inflation – on track to hit double the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target – despite Mr Johnson saying he is not ‘worried’ about it. 

No formal announcement is expected on the national living wage, but there are reports it will be lifted by 5 per cent to £9.42 within weeks. 

Mr Johnson said a ‘tide of anxiety’ is washing into A&E departments and GP practices, as he defended his multi-billion pound tax hike to pay for NHS and social care.

He recalled lying in a hospital bed last year and seeing a hole in the ground, noting: ‘They seemed to be digging a hole for something or indeed someone, possibly me.

‘But the NHS saved me and our wonderful nurses pulled my chestnuts out of that Tartarian pit, and I went back on a visit the other day and I saw that the hole had been filled in with three or four gleaming storeys of a new paediatrics unit.

‘There you have a metaphor for how we must build back better now. We have a huge hole in the public finances, we spent £407billion on Covid support and our debt now stands at over £2trillion, and waiting lists will almost certainly go up before they come down.

‘Covid pushed out the great bow wave of cases and people did not or could not seek help, and that wave is now coming back – a tide of anxiety washing into every A&E and every GP.

‘Your hip replacement, your mother’s surgery and this is the priority of the British people.’

In his speech, Mr Johnson moved to reassure voters in the Tory shires that they will not lose out from his flagship plan to ‘level up’ the North.

And in a thinly veiled swipe at Theresa May and David Cameron, he claimed to be the first PM for decades to have the ‘guts’ to tackle the deep-seated issues facing the UK.

The premier said that as Britain emerges from the Covid pandemic it is now time to ‘get on with our job of uniting and levelling up across the UK’.

The levelling-up agenda has been seen as code for pouring cash into deprived parts of the North. 

But Mr Johnson insisted that by doing so it will take pressure off the ‘overheated’ South East.

‘When I stood on the steps of Downing Street, I promised to fix this crisis.

‘After decades of drift and dither, this reforming Government, this can-do Government, this Government that got Brexit done, that is getting the Covid vaccine rollout done, is going to get social care done and we’re going to get the biggest underlying issues of our economy and society – the problems that no government has had the guts to tackle.’

Mr Johnson insisted there can be no return to the days of mass immigration in the wake of Brexit.

He told activists 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.’   

The PM is repeated his call of recent days for firms facing staff shortages to give workers a pay rise, saying: ‘That is the direction in which this country is going – towards a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy that the people of this country need and deserve.’  

The PM said: ‘The answer is to control immigration, to 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.’

Mr Johnson is also expected to announce a rise in the minimum wage within weeks, it emerged last night.

For people over the age of 23, it will increase by 5.7 per cent from £8.91 to £9.42 per hour, The Times reported. 

To someone working 35 hours per week, the increase would be worth an extra £928 a year before tax. 

The £9.42 figure would be the third biggest annual rise since the 2008 financial crash.  

It will also put the Government in line with the independent advisory body the Low Pay Commission (LPC), which estimated that its 2022 minimum wage recommendation would be £9.42.

According to the Times, the Government’s figure could be higher – in the region of £9.45 per hour – but it will be around this point. 

The figure falls short of Labour’s demand for a rise to £10 an hour, and way short of the £15 Unite figure which caused a stir at Labour’s party conference last wee.

It ultimately led to the resignation of Andy McDonald, who resigned from his shadow cabinet position after saying the leadership had ordered him to argue against the rise to £15, making his position ‘untenable’.  

Next chief and Tory peer Lord Wolfson – who backed Brexit – added his voice to criticism this morning saying there was ‘despondency’ about the situation and the government’s approach was ‘not particularly constructive’.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that failing to take the issues seriously ‘leads to queues at petrol stations and pigs being unnecessarily shot’. 

Earlier, deputy PM Dominic Raab said the new economic model would mean not allowing firms to rely on the ‘cheap drug’ of unskilled foreign workers.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Our vision for the economy as we bounce back from this terrible pandemic, employment rising, youth unemployment going down, is also to make sure that wages are rising.

‘Now, real wages are rising on the latest quarterly figures, but we need to support that and we can’t go back in the long term to being reliant on the addiction, if you like, of cheap, unskilled labour from abroad.’

He added: ‘It’s absolutely true that if we’re, over a long period of time, overly reliant on cheap, unskilled labour from abroad, we’re ducking some of the big productivity issues that we’ve got to address.’