Speech ideas? They grow on trees at No10

Before Theresa May’s speech at the London Wetland Centre, photographers tiptoed from pond to pond hoping to get a shot of a lame duck.

She selected the reserve as the ideal venue for an address about the environment. Her lectern stood before a backdrop of the countryside, all winding rivers and hazy hillsides. Yes, she’d come all the way to a nature reserve only to give her speech indoors beside a photograph of somewhere completely different. It’s a strange business, politics.

Our children, she began, deserved to inherit “a healthy and beautiful country”. To that end, we must cut down on plastics, do more recycling, and encourage the young to “learn about the natural world”. The speech was well-intentioned but appeared to be an essay for GCSE geography. One section, for example, posited that nothing was “more emblematic” of the environment than “trees”.

“A tree,” explained the Prime Minister helpfully, “is a home to countless organisms, from insects to small mammals …”

I could imagine her speechwriters’ brainstorming session in Number 10. “Anyone know what lives in trees?” “I’ll try Wikipedia. T-R-E-E. Hey, apparently all sorts of things live in trees. Insects. Small mammals.” “What sort of small mammals?” “Dunno. Dogs? Just put ‘small mammals’, to be on the safe side.”

“What about birds? Should I put birds? Anyone know if birds live in trees?”

“Not sure. Just put ‘organisms’. That sounds scientific. Hey, did you know that in the autumn their leaves go all orange and fall off, but in the springtime they come back all green?”

Oddly, the speech made no mention of the key influence on the Government’s sudden concern about plastic. Normally, Britain ships most of its plastic waste off to China – but last month the Chinese told us they won’t accept any more. So we’ll soon have tons of rubbish we don’t know what to do with.

A journalist asked Mrs May what steps she and her husband were taking personally to help the environment. She replied that they were recycling “as much as possible”, and had put up bird boxes in their garden. “And as you know,” she added dreamily, “we love walking in the countryside.”

It’s a touching image: just the two of them, strolling happily through field and forest, while she rhapsodises about the wonders of nature.

“Do you know what that is over there, Philip? It’s called ‘a tree’. A tree is a tall wooden plant, typically having a single stem, or ‘trunk’, which …”