MANCHESTER, England — Declaring that Britain wouldn’t return to the “standard damaged mannequin” of the previous, Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed on Wednesday to steer a radical transformation of the nation’s economic system to a future outlined by extremely expert staff incomes larger wages.

In a speech to a cheering crowd at his Conservative Get together’s annual convention, Mr. Johnson mentioned, “We’re going to cope with the underlying problems with our economic system and society — the issues that no authorities has had the heart to sort out, the long-term structural weaknesses within the U.Ok. economic system.”

Projecting optimism however providing few particulars, Mr. Johnson sketched a imaginative and prescient of Britain on the cusp of historic change. He barely talked about the spate of gasoline and meals shortages which have stricken the nation in latest weeks, elevating them solely as proof of a quickly recovering economic system in transition.

“We’re embarking now on a change of route that has been lengthy overdue within the U.Ok. economic system,” Mr. Johnson mentioned. “We aren’t going again to the identical outdated damaged mannequin: low wages, low progress, low expertise, and low productiveness — all of it enabled, as a system, by uncontrolled immigration.”

Mr. Johnson devoted a lot of the speech to his marquee coverage of “leveling up,” which goals to lower the disparities between the economically deprived northern components of England and the extra affluent south.

“We have now some of the imbalanced societies and lopsided economies of all of the richer international locations,” Mr. Johnson mentioned.

Mixing self-deprecating humor with literary references, gleeful jabs on the opposition, and a populist enchantment to social points, Mr. Johnson strengthened his standing because the Conservative Get together’s undisputed chief and all-purpose cheerleader.

At one level, he described the chief of the opposition Labour Get together, Keir Starmer, as Captain Hindsight, the skipper of a cruise ship that had been hijacked by Somali pirates. At one other, the prime minister, who has six kids with a number of companions, lamented Britain’s comparatively small inhabitants, regardless of, he mentioned, what had been his greatest efforts so as to add to the overall.

Mr. Johnson appealed to social and cultural points that resonate with the Conservative rank and file. He vowed to defend Britain’s historical past and to oppose revisionist interpretations of Conservative heroes like Winston Churchill.

Mr. Johnson additionally hailed Margaret Thatcher, one other of his Conservative predecessors, whom he mentioned wouldn’t have hesitated to take painful steps to revive the British economic system because it emerged from the pandemic.

For all of the references to Conservative icons, nevertheless, Mr. Johnson’s speech amounted to a outstanding repudiation of a few of his get together’s guiding rules and governance document.

The Conservatives have lengthy been the get together of enterprise, but Mr. Johnson, in impact, put the onus on companies to interrupt their habit to a low-wage economic system. The Conservatives have led the federal government since 2010, but Mr. Johnson spoke of the final decade as if some one other get together had been in cost.

To many political analysts, Mr. Johnson appeared, within the post-pandemic, post-Brexit period, to be launching one thing new: a celebration that mixes the free-spending, interventionist impulses of social democrats with the legislation and order, anti-immigration instincts of the hard-line Brexiteers who agitated to depart the European Union in 2016.

Mr. Johnson’s rhetorical acrobatics showcased a politician who has managed, repeatedly, to defy political gravity. However as Britain confronts painful changes, he faces a convergence of hostile tendencies that would take a look at this high-wire act. Rising meals and gasoline costs are straining customers; gasoline shortages have compelled motorists to attend for hours to refill their tanks.

Mr. Johnson has portrayed these challenges as rising pains — proof of an economic system awakening from the pandemic and remaking itself to reap the advantages of a high-wage, extremely expert future.

For abnormal folks, nevertheless, the specter of gasoline and meals shortages because the autumn closes in harkens as a substitute to the Seventies, and the interval of strikes and hovering costs that newspapers known as the “winter of discontent.”

Mr. Johnson additionally tried to create a brand new dividing line with the opposition Labour Get together, which he painted as welcoming mass uncontrolled immigration whereas the Conservatives search to spend money on coaching and higher pay for British staff.

Since gaining energy in 2019, Mr. Johnson has clothed his insurance policies within the mantle of certainly one of his predecessors, Mrs. Thatcher, who pushed by way of free-market reforms after the Seventies. Requested in an interview this week how Britain would cope with the rapid penalties of an financial transition that would take years, he echoed a phrase made well-known by Mrs. Thatcher: “There isn’t a various.”

However whereas Mr. Johnson has hailed Mrs. Thatcher as certainly one of his function fashions, his feedback dramatized the extent of his breach along with her legacy. Below Mrs. Thatcher, the Conservative Get together aligned itself intently with enterprise.

That relationship was strained over Brexit, Mr. Johnson’s marquee undertaking, which was opposed by large corporations that took benefit of Europe’s huge single market.

Whereas even his critics welcome the concept of transferring away from a low-wage, low-skills economic system, there might be ache forward for a lot of Britons if the federal government’s insurance policies trigger inflation to spike. A lot of the fiscal stimulus the federal government injected into the economic system to cushion the pandemic’s blow — such a compensation for individuals who misplaced wages after being despatched house — has been wound down.