That message, and his resistance to increased immigration, could appeal to working-class voters who abandoned the opposition Labour Party in 2019 in the heartlands, switched to the Conservatives and gave Mr. Johnson a landslide general election victory.
Asked by the BBC whether there was a crisis, Mr. Johnson said “No,” adding that supply chains were reflecting “the stresses and strains you’d expect from a giant waking up.”
Pressing his case against business, he said that for too long Britain had taken “a low-wage, low-cost approach where business does not invest in skills, does not invest in capital or facilities.”
He singled out the trucking industry, saying: “The fact is that they haven’t been putting money into truck stops, into conditions, into pay, so there is no supply of young people in this country who frankly at the moment are thinking of becoming truck drivers.”
Critics have accused the Conservatives of complacency and of being out of touch with most people.
On Sunday, the prime minister seemed to make light of fears that thousands of pigs could be culled and disposed of because of a shortage of meatpacking workers. The “great hecatomb of pigs” had so far not taken place, Mr. Johnson said in a classical allusion to mass animal sacrifice, prompting anger from farmers.