May: ‘Back me on Brexit and end austerity’
l PM struts onto Tory conference stage to Abba and ends with a plea for party unity l But critics accuse her of ‘dancing around the issues’ in keynote speech
Austerity will come to an end if the UK secures a good Brexit deal, Theresa May pledged in her speech to close the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.
The Prime Minister said the spending review next year would set out more investment for public services if MPS back the agreement she secures from Brussels.
She began a speech filled with uncharacteristic humour by strutting across the stage to Abba’s Dancing Queen, in a reference to viral video of her joining in with performers during a recent visit to Africa. Under growing pressure from Brexiteers led by Boris Johnson, who set himself up as a party leader-in-waiting with a crowd-pleasing speech on Tuesday, Mrs May appealed for unity, warning: “If we all go off in different directions in pursuit of our own vision of the perfect Brexit, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.”
She added: “If we stick together and hold our nerve, I know we can get a deal that delivers for Britain.”
However, while Mrs May stuck to her plan for Brexit, she failed to use the name most commonly associated with it after Mr Johnson demanded in his speech that the Prime Minister “chuck Chequers”. And in a sign
of Downing Street’s concern at the appeal of Labour’s own economic message, the Prime Minister spent large parts of her speech attacking Jeremy Corbyn and his front bench.
She called the party’s response to antisemitism allegations a “national tragedy” and repeatedly condemned Mr Corbyn for questioning the UK intelligence services over the Salisbury poisoning attack. “We cannot outsource our conscience to the Kremlin,” she said.
In an appeal for moderates turned off by Labour, she said she wanted the “decent, moderate and patriotic” Conservatives to be “a party for the whole country”. Mrs May cited Ruth Davidson as an example, saying: “If you are pregnant with your first child and engaged to your girlfriend, you could be the next first minister of Scotland.”
In the key, closing message of her address, Mrs May said the government recognised the economic pain ordinary people had been through since the financial crash of a decade ago.
“After a decade of austerity, people need to know that their hard work has paid off,” she said. “Our national debt is starting to fall for the first time in a generation. That is a historic achievement, but getting to that turning point wasn’t easy.”
Mrs May said while public sector wages were frozen and local services were cut, “fixing our finances was necessary”.
She said there could be “no return to the uncontrolled borrowing of the past”, but added: “The British people need to know that the end is in sight and our message to them must be this: We get it.”
The Prime Minister confirmed fuel duty would be frozen for a ninth consecutive year to put “money in the pockets of hard-working people”.
Mrs May went on: “When we’ve secured a good Brexit deal for Britain, at the spending review next year we will set out our approach for the future. Debt as a share of the economy will continue to go down, support for public services will go up because a decade after the financial crash people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and their hard work has paid off.”
Mrs May said Tories must “defend free markets because it is ordinary working people who benefit”.
But she acknowledged, a decade after the 2008 crash, the after-effects were still being felt by many households.
“Some markets are still not working in the interests of ordinary people,” she said.
“Employment is up, but too many people haven’t had a decent pay rise. The deficit is down, but achieving that has been painful. And our economy is growing, but some communities have been left behind.
“This is why some people still feel that our economy isn’t working for them. Our mission as Conservatives must be to show them that we can build an economy that does.”
The Resolution Foundation think-tank warned the pledge to end austerity would be difficult to deliver, with forecasts showing while the government had achieved a primary surplus, when borrowing is factored in the budget was not on course to be balanced until 2027-28, requiring further tax rises and spending cuts.
Shadow chancellor John Mcdonnell dismissed Mrs May’s austerity claim as “a complete con”, saying: “The government has already told us that spending for the next four years will be hit by many more vicious cuts. Nothing, sadly, has changed.”
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford claimed Mrs May’s speech had “danced around the key issues”.
“There is a massive gulf between her rhetoric and the reality of what is now facing the UK,” Mr Blackford said. “We are just months away from a potentially disastrous hard Brexit – or the utter catastrophe of a no-deal outcome.
“No-one seriously believes the UK’S best days lie ahead under this disastrous, bungling Tory government – and the sooner Mrs May realises that and commits to averting a hard Brexit the better.”