British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised by conservative think tanks and business leaders for making “vacuous” rhetoric about moving towards a “high-wage,” “low-tax” economy, which they say will only lead to further price rises and worse labour shortages. In his speech at the Conservative Party conference on Wednesday, Johnson said he was setting out the “difficult” process of reshaping the British economy. With labour shortages hitting supply chains, leading to empty shelves and queues at petrol stations, the prime minister defended his strategy of restricting the supply of foreign labour after Brexit, insisting his new approach would ultimately create a “high-wage,” “low-tax economy.” The Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think tank, described Johnson’s address as “bombastic but vacuous and economically illiterate,” and “an agenda for levelling down to a centrally-planned, high-tax, low-productivity economy.” The institute’s Head of Research Matthew Lesh said Johnson “is hamstringing the labour market, raising …