Abba fab entrance from Dancing Queen Theresa

SHE can dance, she can jive, having the time of her life. From the moment she jigged across the conference stage with fists pumping to the beat of Abba’s Dancing Queen, Theresa May held conference goers rapt.

A year ago, the Prime Minister’s big speech was ruined by a prank, a cough and a collapsing set. In Birmingham’s Symphony Hall yesterday, her performance was a hit right from the start.

Even before her arrival, the Tory faithful had been pleasantly surprised by the warm-up act. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, the Prime Minister out and about, the opening bars of Dancing Queen thundered out. There she was, bopping around the stage in a sleek Daniel Blake trouser suit.

While her moves may have been a little robotic, the moment of light-hearted self-mockery gave the audience a rare glance of Mrs May’s very human side.

Aides insisted the dancing was the Prime Minister’s idea. She had requested the Swedish group’s 1976 hit, one of her choices during her appearance on Desert Island Discs, as her walk-on music and the rest followed. Whoever dreamt up the stunt, it was a canny opener.

Once the applause and laughter finally faded, the Prime Minister dispensed with memories of last year’s conference speech debacle. “You’ll have to excuse me if I cough during this speech,” she joked. “I’ve been up all night supergluing the backdrop.”

Any fears of a repetition were banished as Mrs May delivered a speech that was by far the most compelling of her career. She switched deftly from levity of her entrance to a sombre reflection on the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

Mrs May’s steel was most visible in passages dealing with Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, bemoaning the party’s descent from a past imbued with decency and patriotism to its present surrender to hard-Left dogma and hate.

Mrs May has had a difficult time with her party ever since last year’s disastrous general election.

After her masterful speech yesterday, the grassroots are, at last, digging the Dancing Queen.

Pictures: AFP, GETTY

the sort of politician who is not a household name even in his own household, made a short Brussels-bashing speech. It went down a storm. After a week of dreary speeches a helping of old-fashion tub-thumping oratory was most welcome.Then after a snappy video of