Conservative conference fiasco hid the true message of Tory Party splits

Although Theresa May’s speech to the Conservative Party conference has been described as a disaster, she was actually extremely lucky. Getting a cough, and the letters falling off the slogan on the wall behind her, could happen to anyone.

Being handed her P45 supposedly on behalf of Boris Johnson told a fundamental truth about the splits within the Tory leadership – the prankster who did it previously showered dollar bills over Fifa President Sepp Blatter, and we know all about him – but it was still a joke.

These incidents have allowed the Prime Minister to spin the disaster as simply unfortunate.

Yet, if they had not occurred, the media attention would have been on her speech itself, and that would have revealed just how ineffectual and pointless her Government has become.

Including the lack of checks on the delegates to the Tory conference, Theresa May is no doubt regretting the cut she imposed on Greater Manchester Police’s budget.

Her plan to resume council house building will create just 5,000 houses a year – when over a million households are on waiting lists. Spread evenly across the country, that’s equivalent to building 50 houses a year in a place the size of Edinburgh. It’s not really going to change the housing shortage in Edinburgh is it?

She offered five times as much money for the Help to Buy scheme, cynically known among Conservative MPS as Help to Buy Votes, which appears to help first-time buyers but actually inflates the prices of new houses before the buyers are “helped”.

It’s like a supermarket which puts up its prices one week and then advertises £1 off the next. In reality the money simply inflates the profits of the building industry, so it’s another giveaway to the City of London.

And her promise to cut energy bills was only a watereddown version of Labour’s policy to tackle profiteering by energy companies.

No one who knows the Conservative Party can imagine it putting the public before company profits.

So despite the bad publicity, the Prime Minister is lucky that the media response to her speech was dominated by discussion of Strepsils and pranksters.

Discussing what she actually said would have been far more damaging.

PHIL TATE Craiglockhart Road, Edinburgh