Splutter disaster
Farcical scenes as PM coughs through speech & set falls apart Labour says she’s stealing ideas and should apologise to the people
THERESA May summed up her ailing party yesterday as she coughed her way through her conference speech amid farcical scenes.
Embarrassed Chancellor Philip Hammond eventually handed her a lozenge to help her get through what was meant to be the event’s showpiece. As the Prime Minister struggled on, letters from the slogan “Building a country that works for everyone” then fell off the stage backdrop. And as talk of party infighting continued, fed-up Home Secretary Amber Rudd had to urge reluctant Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to stand and applaud the PM. But while the chaotic scenes – including a P45 prank by Simon Brodkin – overshadowed her words, they did not escape criticism. Policy announcements on energy and housing triggered claims that the Tory chief had stolen Labour ideas.
The PM, who has been suffering a heavy cold, vowed to end rip-off energy bills by introducing a price cap. Legislation will be unveiled next week and the Tories have denied the idea is based on the energy price freeze Labour planned under the leadership of Ed Miliband.
Mrs May also pledged an extra £2billion to fund 25,000 homes for social rent by 2021 and confirmed a tuition fees hike to £9,500 would be scrapped and a review into student funding launched.
And she finally apologised to Tory activists for the disastrous snap election, admitting her campaign “fell short”.
Labour said the PM’s address was
supposed to relaunch her Premiership but had “only confirmed her failure”.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: “In July, #TheresaMay asked for policy ideas so I sent her our manifesto. Taking a few of our policies & watering them down won’t work.” Mocking her cold, Ed Miliband tweeted a link to a Tory energy cap story, saying: “Cough… sure I’ve have heard this somewhere before.”
Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Jon Trickett added: “All she has to offer are watered down versions of Labour’s ideas, reheated policies and empty promises.
“Rather than apologising to her party, Theresa May should have taken the opportunity to apologise to the public.”
Insiders insisted Mrs May was “happy and pleased” with how her speech went. Poking fun at her delivery, she tweeted a shot of her red box, speech and several cold treatments captioned: “*coughs*”. But there was more misery as she was accused of plagiarising US TV series The West Wing. Some lines were said to be strikingly similar to a speech by President Josiah Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen, in episode 20 Hours in America.
A senior Downing Street source said: “There’s no question of plagiarism. But if you’re interested in the PM’s favourite US TV shows, West Wing isn’t among them.”
Meanwhile, pop star Florence Welch told the Tories to stop using her cover of You Got the Love, which was played at the conference yesterday. The Florence and the Machine singer, 31, tweeted that it “was not approved by us, nor would it have been had they asked”.