She really did give the speech of a lifetime
EVER since her botched general election campaign, Theresa May’s leadership has been mired in crisis. Confronted by a divided party, an intransigent EU and insurgent Labour movement, Downing Street has been under permanent siege. The Prime Minister’s struggle was graphically symbolised by her disastrous conference speech last year, when the set collapsed and she was reduced to near silence by a coughing fit.
The contrast between that and her impressive performance in Birmingham yesterday could hardly be greater. In place of humiliation there was authority. Instead of embarrassed sympathy from the delegates there was genuine acclaim. Theresa May showed a new self-confidence, conviction and fluency on the platform, as if she has been strengthened rather than broken by her recent ordeals.
This was her finest conference speech as Prime Minister. If she had spoken like that during the general election, she would not have squandered her parliamentary majority. As it is, she has managed to stifle the fevered speculation about the Tory leadership. Coming into the conference there was a widespread sense that she was doomed, a mood reinforced by bitter splits over Brexit and by the adulation for Boris Johnson, her biggest political rival.
YESTERDAY morning, just before her speech, Tory MP James Duddridge publicly expressed his lack of confidence in her. “We limp on and pretend we are all behind a leader who is not delivering,” he told the BBC. But after her speech that kind of disgruntlement has lessened. The Tories left Birmingham in far better heart than when they arrived.
It would be wrong to exaggerate the long-term impact of leaders’ conference speeches. Most of them make little difference and are forgotten within weeks. Since the war, there have been only a handful of addresses that altered the political landscape. One was Margaret Thatcher’s renowned defence in 1981 of her tough economic policies, during which she declared that “the lady’s not for turning”. Another was Neil Kinnock’s courageous denunciation of the Militant Tendency at Bournemouth in 1985, which signalled the Labour moderates’ fightback against the far-Left. More recently, David Cameron’s notes-free oration in 2007 brilliantly thwarted Gordon Brown’s plan to call a snap general election.
But for a prime minister, it is action rather than rhetoric that counts. Her biggest battle still lies ahead as she attempts to secure a good Brexit deal for Britain. Negotiations with Brussels are what matter for this country. And even the most powerful speech cannot alter the brutal parliamentary arithmetic against her.
Nevertheless, none of this should diminish the scale of her achievement in Birmingham. For the first time in her premiership she set out a clear course for her Government, as well as displaying passion and self-deprecating humour. She bounced on to the stage to the tune of Abba’s Dancing Queen, mocking her own notorious lack of rhythm on the dancefloor. Referring to the conference calamity last year, she said, “I’ve been up all night, supergluing the backdrop.”
The serious stuff was just as effective. Her core theme was her determination to anchor her party firmly in the pragmatic centre ground of British politics, through measures such as more financial support for the NHS and an end of
THIS led her to a strong defence of capitalism and the Tories’ own recent record, which has seen unprecedented levels of job creation and reductions in welfare dependency. But, in one of her weaker sections, she pledged an end to austerity in the public sector, a move that could undo the fiscal restraint of the past eight years, push up the deficit again and ultimately slow down growth.
Nor was she was entirely convincing about her Brexit strategy, apart from her denunciation of calls for another referendum, which she described as “not a people’s vote” but a “politicians’ vote”. Tellingly, she did not use the word “Chequers” once in her speech, which implies that she is ready for more compromises. Indeed, she explicitly warned against ideological “purity” on EU withdrawal, where the quest for “a perfect Brexit” may result in “no Brexit”.
For all her hard-headed realism there is an element of wishful thinking. That can be seen in her belief that the EU will eventually abandon its stubbornness and in her eagerness to wrap herself in the Ulster Unionist flag, a stance that precludes an imaginative solution to the Irish border question.
Despite such concerns, May’s speech was a triumph that exceeded expectations. She put the Conservatives back in the mainstream, whereas Corbyn’s Labour remains in the Marxist wilderness.
‘Stifling speculation on Tory leadership’