LET’S ALL DANCE TO MAY’S TUNE
In a scintillating conference speech, an emboldened Prime Minister yesterday truly defined how the nation can unite to ‘build a better Britain’... and the Daily Express today says:
THERESA May yesterday issued a rallying cry for the country to unite in the push for Brexit, saying: “Together, we can build a better Britain.” As she danced on to the stage for her barnstorming Tory Conference speech, the Prime Minister said the UK needed to “recapture the spirit of common purpose” shown in the world wars as next year’s EU exit looms.
She warned Brussels that Brit- ain was “not afraid” to quit the bloc without a trade deal.
Unveiling an ambitious vision for Britain’s independent future, she declared that “austerity is over”. She vowed to transform the NHS,
raise spending on public services and free councils to build tens of thousands more homes.
“We stand at a pivotal moment in our history,” she told the conference in Birmingham, adding: “When we come together there is no limit to what we can achieve.”
In an uproarious start, the Prime Minister danced across the stage as Abba’s Dancing Queen blasted out, making light of her much-mocked gyrations with schoolchildren during her recent African visit.
In her hour-long address she also delivered her most scathing onslaught to date on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour.
UNITED ON BREXIT
The Tories need to end their infighting over Brexit and pull together to help the push for a deal with the EU, the Prime Minister said.
While setting out a clear case for her proposals for the future relationship with Brussels, she conspicuously did not once refer to them as the “Chequers plan”.
In a sign that Downing Street wants to rebrand the package after criticism from Brexiteers, she referred to her blueprint as a “freetrade deal”. She warned they could not expect a “perfect Brexit”.
Mrs May said: “Our proposal is for a free-trade deal that provides for frictionless trade in goods.
“It would protect hundreds of thousands of jobs in the just-intime supply chains our manufacturing firms rely on.
“Businesses wouldn’t face costly checks when they export to the EU, so they can invest with confidence.
“And it would protect our precious Union – the seamless border in Northern Ireland, a bedrock of peace and stability, would see no change whatsoever.”
In a direct appeal to her squabbling MPs, she said: “Those of us who do respect the result – whichever side of the question we stood on two years ago – need to come together now.
“If we don’t – if we all go off in different directions in pursuit of our own visions of the perfect Brexit – we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.”
The snub from EU leaders to Britain’s offer at a summit in Austria showed the talks were reaching their “toughest phase”, she said.
“You saw in Salzburg that I am standing up for Britain. What we are proposing is very challenging for the EU. But if we stick together and hold our nerve I know we can get a deal that delivers for Britain,” she added. Mrs May said quitting the EU without a deal could be “tough at first” but the “resilience and ingenuity of the British people would see us through”.
She said: “Some people ask me to rule out no deal. But if I did that I would weaken our negotiating position and have to agree to whatever the EU offers.”
HONOURING REFERENDUM
Voters’ faith in democracy would be shaken if Remain campaigners succeeded in their demand for a fresh referendum, the Prime Minister warned.
“There are plenty of prominent people in British politics – in Parliament and out of it – who want to stop Brexit in its tracks,” she said.
“Their latest plan is to hold a second referendum – they call it a ‘People’s Vote’. But we had the people’s vote – the people voted to leave. A second referendum would be a ‘politicians’ vote’, politicians telling people they got it wrong the first time and should try again.
“Think for a moment what it would do to faith in our democracy if – having asked the people of this country to take this decision – politicians tried to overturn it.”
THE CORBYN PARTY
Labour’s takeover by the hard-Left under Jeremy Corbyn was a “national tragedy”, Mrs May said. In her fiercest attack yet on the opposition, the Prime Minister accused the Labour leader of lacking decency and patriotism. “The Jeremy Corbyn Party rejects the common values that once bridged our political divide,” she said. “Would Clement Attlee, Churchill’s trusteddeputy during the Second World War, have told British Jews they didn’t know the meaning of anti-Semitism? What has befallen Labour is a national tragedy.”
While Tories passionately disagreed with many Labour policies in the past “at least they had some basic qualities that everyone could respect”, the Prime Minister said.
Most Labour MP in past generations had been proud of Britain and its Armed Forces.
“Today, when I look across at the opposition benches, I can still see that Labour Party, the heirs of Hugh Gaitskell and Barbara Castle, Dennis Healy and John Smith.
“But not on the front bench. Instead their faces stare blankly out from the rows behind, while another party occupies prime position – the Jeremy Corbyn Party.”
Mrs May savaged Mr Corbyn over his reluctance to criticise Russia and the hounding of many Labour MPs by the hard-Left.
She said: “That is what Jeremy Corbyn has done to the Labour Party. It is our duty, in this Conservative Party, to make sure he can never do it to our country.
“Just imagine if he were Prime Minister. He says Britain should disarm herself in the hope others follow suit. I say no – we must keep our defences strong to keep our country safe.”
She added: “He poses as a humanitarian.
“But he says that military action to save lives is only justified with the approval of the Security Council – effectively giving Russia a veto.
“I say no – we cannot outsource our conscience to the Kremlin.”
BACKING BUSINESS
Conservatives need to take on Labour by standing up for entrepreneurs, the Prime Minister said.
And she confronted accusations that her party had abandoned its traditional support for business.
“We should defend free markets, because it is ordinary working people who benefit,” she said.
She also took a swipe at former foreign secretary Boris Johnson for allegedly saying “**** business” during a private meeting about employers’ Brexit concerns.
Without naming the former foreign secretary, she said: “To all businesses – large and small – you may have heard that there is a fourletter word to describe what we Conservatives want to do to you.
It has a single syllable. It is of Anglo-Saxon derivation. It ends in the letter ‘K’. Back business.”
“Britain, under my Conservative Government, is open for business.”
FIRST WORLD WAR
Britain must “recapture the spirit of common purpose” that the nation felt during the First World War, Mrs May said.
Ahead of next month’s centenary of the armistice, the Prime Minister spoke of the “remarkable generation” that served on the battlefields, on the seas and on the home front.
Mrs May told how she visited the Menin Gate at Ypres in Belgium last year to mark the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele, recalling how she found the inscription of the name of her father’s cousin Hubert Grant who fought in the battle aged 19. She quoted words inscribed at the Hall of Memory saying: “See to it that they shall not have suffered and died in vain.”
She added: “We must recapture that spirit of common purpose because the lesson of that remarkable generation is clear – if we come together, there is no limit to what we can achieve.”