As ruling UK Conservatives meet, businesses clamor for help

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — British Treasury chief Rishi Sunak promised Monday to deliver an economy based on “good work, better skills and higher wages,” as the governing Conservative Party tried to shrug off the U.K.'s economic turmoil as the growing pains of a thriving, self-reliant post-Brexit economy.

Sunak touted the U.K.’s low unemployment rate of under 5% as a sign it is putting pandemic disruptions behind it. He said now that Britain has left the European Union, it will embrace “the agility, flexibility and freedom provided by Brexit” to create a dynamic, high-tech economy.

For some, Sunak’s optimism in a speech to a conference of the ruling Conservatives struck a jarring note. It came as the combination of coronavirus and Brexit is sending shock waves through the British economy, with soldiers drafted in to ease fuel shortages and businesses scrambling to get enough staff.

Since the Tories' last in-person conference two years ago, the party won a huge parliamentary majority under Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But Britain also has been hammered by a coronavirus pandemic that has left more than 136,000 people in the U.K. dead, Europe's highest death toll after Russia. The country also left the EU last year, ending its seamless economic integration with a trading bloc of almost half a billion people.

In recent weeks, a shortage of truck drivers, due to factors including pandemic disruptions and a post-Brexit exodus of European workers, has snarled British supply chains, leaving some empty shelves in supermarkets, fast-food chains without chicken and gas pumps without fuel. Scores of soldiers began driving fuel tankers Monday after more than a week of gas shortages.

A major factor is post-Brexit immigration rules that mean EU citizens can no longer live and work...