Tories will stick with May to the last rasp
Ditching PM would help Jez
THE first conversation I earwigged on arriving in Manchester for the Tory conference was: “She’s going to go, isn’t she?”
There was no need to eavesdrop further to know who “she” was.
No longer she who must be obeyed but she who’s being abandoned.
The PM was being sized up for the coffin labelled Baroness May of Maidenhead carting her off to the political graveyard that’s the House of Lords.
The only other topic was: “What’s Boris up to?”
Freeze
Some thought the Foreign Secretary has shot his bolt as next Tory leader, others want Theresa May to shoot him, and a few reckon he’ll bolt from Cabinet.
The Tories even have to speak in Klingon on the Starship Free Enterprise. As their “Building a country that works for everyone” slogan crumbled before the world’s eyes they had to learn to say: “Bui ding a c ntry tha orks or ryon”.
Watching letters fall off a slogan with the word “country” is nail-biting in case a naughty four remain. Mrs May should use “nation”. What with the P45 it marked an end to the weirdest conference season in my 32 years covering them. In Brighton the Labour leader needed to show just one whisker and the “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn” football chant passed from person to person like a Mexican soundwave. Weird.
I asked Mrs May what she made of Labour’s conference. “I didn’t watch it,” she said. Weird.
Some Tories obviously did because each new policy was a pale shadow of one announced by Labour a week earlier.
It was like they’d gone off to buy cans of Labour Lite. In Poundland.
Mrs May offered 25,000 social homes over four years while Labour pledged 60,000 in two. She’ll freeze uni tuition fees but Labour will abolish them.
She’d be out on her ear by year’s close if the Tories had a majority. But the 30 MPs plotting that this weekend should clock that the PM’s coughing and spluttering changes nothing.
A leadership contest would lead to an election and Corbers in No10. That’s because the loser’s embittered supporters would bring down the winner.
The Tories are turkeys, but they won’t want a vote for Christmas.