So excruciating, I wanted to hug her myself

Theresa May’s pitiful speech was a far cry from the strong woman set on uniting the party last year

Mayday! Mayday! Prime Minister in distress. A country hiding behind the cushions of the sofa in embarrassment as we witnessed our national leader’s voice fail her at the most important moment in her political life. Theresa May’s speech in Manchester was so excruciating, her personal plight so distressing, that only the most heartless Momentum zealot could have failed to feel her pain.

Was this really the strong and stable politician I interviewed the day before she became leader of the Conservative Party and thereafter PM? What had happened to the confidence, the self-belief and fierce sense of purpose she revealed as we chatted over tea at a country hotel in Oxfordshire?

Back then she billed herself as the one person capable of uniting her party and bringing the country together after Brexit. But the critics who have subsequently mocked her for possessing a robotic manner were proven wrong yesterday; on that stage in Manchester, May demonstrated she is human, with all the frailties that suggests.

And the sight of her so flustered was awful to behold. So awful, it felt wrong to be watching. I’m sure I wasn’t the only viewer praying for a power cut. Couldn’t her husband Philip have just rushed the stage or set off the sprinklers? It would have been a kindness.

As it was, she began her address with a mea culpa; her presidential style had failed to win the comfortable majority she had anticipated. In the long minutes that followed, as her voice quivered and the coughing began, the only president that sprang to mind was a haggard Nixon, sweating profusely in his 1960 debate against JFK. Nobody remembered what he said. And as May blushed heavily, sipped water and tried in vain to control her wayward voice, her pronouncements on housing and energy policy were lost.

She reddened because she felt out of control; and she is a woman for whom being in control is important.

Take May’s famous penchant for bright shoes; they are rightly interpreted as a hint at another side to her personality. But they remain a very controlled, contained hint at frivolity; nothing she does is left to chance.

Did I warm to her when we met? I certainly found she had an authenticity lacking in a great many of her showboating, oleaginous colleagues. She did not lack drive but she seemed a safe pair of hands. What she did seem short on was ego, which I think is a positive trait.

But in dire situations such as this, it is ego is that gets a politician (and certainly a male politician) through. Instead May has garnered our pity, and no woman wants to be pitied when she has had the guts and gumption to break through the glass ceiling and reach the very pinnacle of her profession.

“How do you respond when tough times come upon you?” she asked rhetorically at one point. When faced with the challenge of a voice that had done something like 28 interviews the day before? When confronted by an intruder playing your political future for laughs?

She did what she always does: she carried on. Even when reduced to a hoarse whisper. Painful to do. Painful to watch.

I know the sort of woman May is, so I know this failure will have floored her. She has endured personal adversity – childlessness, diabetes – but this ignominious political tragedy will be a body blow.

A man usually outsources guilt; the air was too dry in the hall, the previous week’s interview schedule was too gruelling. Some minion’s head must roll.

A woman typically blames herself; I took on too much, I should have taken better care of my throat, I let myself down. Self reproach of the very worst sort.

Yet to her credit May got through it. Her eyes misted over with tears as her spouse swiftly embraced her, thank God. I wanted to hug her myself. Although our premier is not the tactile sort, on this extraordinary occasion I think she might even have let me.

There is no pleasure to be had in seeing someone humiliated. The natural, human, humane response is to feel sorry for someone in extremis. And the party faithful clapped, as they do when something draws to a close.

But, sadly, I fear much more had ended than a conference speech.