Dismay as everything starts to fall apart for hapless PM
Despite support in the hall, millions see speech turn to farce with coughs, heckles and a disintegrating set
MURPHY’S Law states that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. In the Conservative Party, it could well be renamed May’s Law after her conference speech was hit by mishap upon disaster upon calamity.
What was supposed to be a triumph turned into the most humiliating 65 minutes of Theresa May’s career on a day that will be remembered for decades for all the wrong reasons.
Even before the final day of the party gathering in Manchester, Mrs May and her speechwriters had been accused of plagiarism, after an eagle-eyed fan of the US TV series The West Wing spotted a remarkable coincidence.
In a pre-released passage, she said: “It is when tested the most that we reach deep within ourselves and find that our capacity to rise to the challenge before us may well be limitless.”
A speech by the fictional US president Josiah Bartlett in The West Wing goes: “Every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we are reminded that that capacity may well be limitless.”
Mrs May had been scheduled to start at 11.20 yesterday, but after an unexplained delay to the start of the day’s speeches, she finally took to the stage 26 minutes late. A video played before her arrival used You’ve Got The Love by Florence and the Machine as its background music. Unfortunately the Conservatives appeared not to have asked for permission from Labour-supporting singer Florence Welch, who asked the Tories not to use her music again.
11.46am: The music chosen for her grand entrance was This Is What You
Came For by Calvin Harris and Rihanna. The song title did not reflect what happened next. After a 40-second ovation, Mrs May – who had been nursing a cold throughout the conference – cleared her throat, loudly, giving a taste of what was to come.
11.48: Just two minutes into her speech, Mrs May was on the defensive, admitting that the general election campaign “fell short” because: “It was too scripted, too presidential… I hold my hands up for that. I take responsibility. I led the campaign, and I am sorry.”
It was the closest she has come to apologising for the snap general election, and went down well in the hall, but was a downbeat start to a speech designed to save an ailing premiership.
11.51: The first scripted joke of the speech came after Mrs May admitted her own failings, saying: “I know that people think I’m not very emotional… and I don’t mind being called things like the Ice Maiden – though perhaps George Osborne took the analogy a little too far.” The former chancellor is alleged to have said that he wanted Mrs May chopped up in his freezer, and the audience loved the wisecrack.
But Mrs May’s throat was starting to cause trouble as she cleared her throat again and began sipping water from a glass on the lectern. She went on to list the Conservatives’ achievements since 2010, using breaks when people were clapping to clear her throat.
12.03: The first policy announcement of the day came 17 minutes into the speech. Setting out the reasons she is in politics, Mrs May referred to her desire to see justice for the families of the 96 victims of the Hillsborough disaster, the need for inquiries into child abuse and into the Grenfell Tower disaster, before announcing an independent review of the Mental Health Act.
12.05: Setting out the advantages of capitalism and a free-market economy, Mrs May told delegates: “Let us win this argument for a new generation and defend free and open markets with all our might,” before clearing her throat loudly for a second time.
12.07: As Mrs May set out the party’s “vision of an open, global, self-confident Britain”, she spotted from the corner of her eye serial prankster Simon Brodkin, who had been seated near the stage, approach from the floor saying: “Prime Minister, I’m sorry, but Boris asked me to give you this.”
As Mrs May tried to continue, he held out a P45 form to her. Without stopping, she took the A4 sheet from him and bent down to put it on the floor under her lectern. But in taking the P45 from him, she had created an image that will outlive her premiership.
With the Cabinet seemingly in a state of paralysis in their seats, Brodkin turned to the Foreign Secretary, gave a thumbs-up, and said: “Boris, job done!”
He even tried to shake Mr Johnson’s hand, but Mr Johnson barked: “Get lost, go away.” The Home Secretary Amber Rudd, sitting next to him, added: “Please leave.”
As delegates looked on in bewilderment and photographers surrounded Brodkin, Mrs May tried to soldier on, saying “some people say we’ve spent too much time talking about Jeremy Corbyn’s past”, then, looking at the unfolding pandemonium in front of her, repeated herself after saying “some people might not have heard that”.
Incredibly, security guards only ushered Brodkin away from the scene 49 seconds after he had approached her.
Remaining in character as a Tory activist, Brodkin shouted: “Boris asked me. Boris, please say you did this!”
As Brodkin was finally removed by security guards, there was applause from delegates, who started shouting “get him out” and chanting “out, out, out,” forcing Mrs May to stop.
It was another 32 seconds before Mrs May tried to speak, saying: “Shall we, err…”, but was once again silenced as the audience rose to its feet and gave her an ovation and a huge cheer. It was not entirely spontaneous – Amber Rudd had to tell Boris Johnson, sitting next to her, to “stand up”.
In what was to be the first of many unscripted jokes, Mrs May said: “I was about to talk about somebody I’d like to give a P45 to and that’s Jeremy Corbyn,” to an even louder cheer.
The situation was still, at this stage, recoverable for the Prime Minister, with the majority of her speech still to come. But she was quickly in trouble.
12.13: As Mrs May addressed immigration, telling EU citizens they are valued and welcome, she started to lose her voice, coughing and drinking water. She managed one more sentence before her reedy voice tailed off again and she had to have more water.
She tried to plough on. Talking about the economy being back on track, she joked: “It sounds as if my voice isn’t back on track.” As she put her hand on her chest and coughed repeatedly, the audience kept on applauding, as if to give her a break.
Moments later her voice faltered to a hoarse whisper, and then to a stop.
Delegates turned to each other, increasingly concerned, as they began to wonder whether Mrs May was going to be able to get to the end of her speech.
As the Prime Minister drank more water on stage, she spilled some down her chin and wiped it away. Her glass empty, a party worker dashed on from stage left to refill it.
The room again gave her a standing ovation lasting nearly two minutes, with some shouting, “Go on, Theresa”.
In the midst of it, Philip Hammond handed her a yellow cough sweet and as she popped it into her mouth she quipped: “I hope you noticed that, ladies and gentlemen – the Chancellor giving something away free.”
Coughing again as she denounced Labour policy because “you can’t get something for nothing”, she said: “The Chancellor will probably tell me there will be a price to pay in a minute.”
12.18: Now talking about health, she re-
‘It was too scripted, too presidential. I hold my hands up for that. I take responsibility – I led the campaign, and I am sorry’
‘I was about to talk about somebody I’d like to give a P45 to – and that’s Jeremy Corbyn’
ferred to how the NHS diagnosed her type 1 diabetes “and taught me how to manage it so I could get on with my life”. Her nose was starting to run, and she pulled out a tissue. When it came to nurses’ training, she was literally unable to speak, and after more water, rasped: “Shows what good the Chancellor’s cough sweet is!”
She grinned as the audience warmly applauded, appreciating her willpower, but outside the hall television viewers were seeing a Prime Minister shrinking before their very eyes.
12.31: In the most personal moment of her speech, Mrs May said: “It has always been a great sadness for me and Philip that we were never blessed with children. It seems some things in life are just never meant to be.”
Sympathy for her among delegates was swelling, but sympathy is never an emotion prime ministers wish to court. She made another major announcement, £2 billion extra for affordable homes and more council house building, but it was already abundantly clear that her policies were not going to be the talking point of the speech.
12.37: Her voice temporarily recovered, Mrs May announced a draft bill to put a cap on energy prices, as the manifesto promised. The announcement, which had been redacted in previews of the speech circulated to journalists, immediately led to a fall in the share prices of the major energy firms. Minutes later, as she discussed the Manchester terrorist attack, her voice failed yet again.
12.45: As Mrs May talked about her “image of modern Britain”, the stage set itself began to fall apart. The slogan behind her, “Building a country that works for everyone”, disintegrated letter by letter. The F in “for” fell off in clear camera shot, followed later by the final E, so that the last line read “or everyon” by the time she finished. After Mrs May left the stage, more letters had fallen, leaving a forlorn looking slogan: “Bui ding a c ntry tha orks or ryon”.
As she wound up, Mrs May said: “It has never been my style to hide… to retreat in the face of difficulty, to give up and turn away.” She had written the words at least a day before, but they were as apt as they were prophetic.
To more applause, she added: “The test of a leader is how you respond when tough times come upon you.”
12.51: After 65 gruelling minutes, Mrs May finished and Philip May rushed on to the stage to hug her.
14.22: Mrs May tweeted a photograph of her speech, captioned “*coughs*” and a ministerial red box surrounded by cough sweets and cold remedies.
Her sense of humour had survived her hour-long public humiliation, but it is too early to predict whether her premiership will.