Never mind the voters, she couldn’t inspire own team

DURING the Election campaign, Theresa May was not only refusing to take part in televised head-to-head Election debates with Jeremy Corbyn – she was also avoiding her own activists toiling at CCHQ.

Advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill were worried about her health, in case she should be struck down by a virus before polling day.

‘She didn’t come into the office very often because it was basically a pit of germs,’ a Tory source says. ‘There were quite a lot of germs flying around.’

But Mrs May’s absence came at a cost to staff morale and Timothy, Hill and Election experts Lynton Crosby and Lord Gilbert were all told the troops needed their leader.

‘After three or four weeks, people are working hard. It’s a bit dysfunctional managerially in here, just get her in,’ one staffer recalls saying.

‘Get her to rally the troops. They haven’t heard from her. They are fighting for someone they’ve never spoken to, they’ve never seen.’

When the Prime Minister did emerge and address the war room, it was hardly the rousing rallying cry the staff required.

In the digital age a speaker knows they have lost their audience when they start checking their phones for interesting items on Twitter.

It was all ‘too late’, according to several staff.

One witness described it as simply a repeat of the stump speech everyone in the building had heard her make dozens of times already – not the kind of rousing address that would fire up her weary workers.

‘It was all “strong and stable” and the risks of Corbyn’s “coalition of chaos”. I couldn’t believe it,’ the witness said.

‘This was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom talking in the middle of an Election to her own campaign staff and she couldn’t even hold the room.’