Britain’s not working

In his final speeches as prime minister, Boris Johnson listed seemingly endless achievements. Prominent among them was the claim that more people are in work now than before the pandemic. Yet any employers listening may have struggled to reconcile that with their frantic search for people to harvest crops, serve in hotels and restaurants, provide health and social care, and ensure that transport hubs can operate. Front page pictures in newspapers of long queues at airports and crops rotting in fields painted a different picture.The explanation for this apparent paradox was simple. The prime minister’s claim, like so many he has made, was false. The independent fact checking organisation Full Fact provided the true figures in April 2022: the workforce actually had 600 000 fewer workers than before the pandemic. Full Fact noted with disappointment that Johnson had, by then, made this claim nine times in parliament without correcting the…
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