PM aims to shift narrative back to ordinary workers in plea for party to keep the faith

THERESA MAY will attempt to heal divisions within the Conservative Party today as she calls on her colleagues to “shape up” and do their duty for Britain.

In a conference speech that will help determine her future as leader, the Prime Minister will tell her Cabinet they must focus on the job security of “ordinary working people” rather than the security of their own positions.

Mrs May must use her speech to convince MPS and party members that they should keep faith with her as leader.

Like Boris Johnson did in his own speech, Mrs May will draw inspiration from Sir Winston Churchill by calling on the country to “go forward together”.

She will also shoulder responsibility for the Conservative Party’s poor general election result and promise to learn lessons from it, but will stop short of apologising for calling the snap election in the first place.

The speech is likely to contain at least two major domestic policy announcements that Downing Street hopes will help to shift the narrative away from Brexit.

Mrs May is expected to announce a plan for hundreds of thousands of new council homes to be built with the help of housing associations.

She will tell the conference in Manchester: “Let us do our duty by Britain. Let us shape up and give the country the government it needs.”

After a conference dominated by ministers expressing their disquiet over Boris Johnson’s interventions on Brexit, Mrs May will attempt to persuade her warring Cabinet to put their differences behind them by saying that: “Beyond this hall, beyond the gossip pages of the newspapers, and beyond the streets, corridors and meeting rooms of Westminster, life continues – the lives of ordinary working people go on, and they must be our focus today.

“Not focusing on our future, but on the future of their children and their grandchildren. That is what I am in politics for. To make a difference.”