‘It’s just like North Korea – everyone publicly says how wonderful the dear leader is …’
After a disastrous week of conference calamities and a failed plot to oust her, May stands firm – but for how long?
THE first outward sign that all was not well for Theresa May was at the end of a conference party thrown by the Torysupporting Spectator magazine.
Traditionally the Conservative leader and most of their senior allies attend this annual party to hobnob with journalists and activists on the evening before their big speech.
However, the Prime Minister was nowhere to be seen at the party in the Midland Hotel in Manchester.
The truth was that Mrs May was in her hotel room, trying to save her voice after a gruelling few days meeting activists, speaking at meetings and conducting dozens of interviews. But the impact of all this activity had taken its toll, as her voice faltered to catastrophic effect during one of the most disastrous conference speeches by any party leader in living memory.
Mrs May’s speech started well, with a heartfelt apology to the party for her disastrous election campaign that lost the Conservatives’ majority in the House of Commons.
But soon it started to fall apart. First serial prankster Simon Brodkin gave her a fake P45 redundancy notice, which she accepted.
Shortly afterwards Mrs May’s voice was collapsing alarmingly into coughs, as all those interviews and receptions caught up with her.
Then letters from the slogan on the stage started to fall behind her.
After 65 minutes, Mrs May reached the finishing line and her husband Philip rushed on to the stage to hug her, telling her she was “fabulous”.
Mrs May left the conference centre, pointing to her throat, and within minutes she was in the back of her official car being taken to London.
The journey back was grim. One source said she was “sobbing”. Another said Mr May had urged her to resign. Both of these claims were denied outright by Downing Street.
Later, Mrs May tried to make the best of a bad day, captioning on Twitter a photograph of her Prime Ministerial red box alongside cold remedies with the word “cough”.
But Tory MPs failed to see the funny side. The dreadful speech appeared to sum up a prime minister who was in freefall.
Rumours that she might quit reached senior ministers who were returning to their homes from Manchester. One told The Sunday Telegraph at the time: “Things are moving quite quickly. Conversations are being held. She is thinking about it [resigning]. The tectonic plates are moving more fundamentally now. She has to decide.”
The influential European Reform Group of 80 Tory MPs held conference calls with dozens of MPs to discuss whether Mrs May could still deliver Brexit and was worth keeping in place.
Sensing the mood, loyalists acting for Mrs May briefed The Times that Grant Shapps, the former party chairman, was leading a plot to force the Prime Minister out of office.
Forced to break cover, Mr Shapps took to BBC radio on Thursday night to claim that he had the support of 30 Tory MPs. Mr Shapps’ media assault continued on Friday, telling breakfast television: “The writing is on the wall for May. We can’t just carry on.
“I think having lost an election, the party must look for a new leader to take us forward,” adding: “One or two Cabinet members privately agree.”
The air of paranoia in the party was not helped when it emerged that Andrew Mitchell, a friend of David Davis, spoke at a dinner for Mr Shapps’ local Tory association. He has denied being one of the plotters.
But – as Mrs May’s allies might have hoped when they leaked his name – the reaction to Mr Shapps’ outburst from Conservative MPs in their encrypted WhatsApp group was brutal.
One said: “There are fewer signatures on your list than files sent to the CPS after the election campaign you ran as chairman.” Another wrote: “Do yourself a favour and wind your neck in.”
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, even stepped in, telling his fellow MPs: “We have JUST HAD AN ELECTION and people are fed up with all this malarkey. Get behind the PM … Circle the wagons, turn the fire on Corbyn and talk about nothing except our great policies and what we can do for the country.”
A friend of Mr Shapps dismissed the WhatsApp attacks from MPs, who reg- ularly complain about attacks on them on social media, as hypocritical. One said: “The hypocrisy is extraordinary. This is outrageous behaviour – the worst kind of cyber bullying. The MPs’ WhatsApp group has become an extremist place to gather and spread bile.”
A second MP friend said the briefing against Mr Shapps would backfire: “The whips have thrust Grant up in the air, poured petrol over him and set fire to him. But you can only do that so many times – it is straight out of the Gordon Brown playbook.” Mrs May re- appeared on Friday, telling TV cameras in her Maidenhead constituency: “What the country needs is calm leadership and that is what I am providing with the full support of my Cabinet.”
On the face of it, the forced outing of Mr Shapps had secured the Prime Minister’s future – and the jobs of her ministers – for now. But the rebels insist they are playing a longer game. One MP said: “She had two disasters to go before she falls and the conference speech was the first disaster.”
A senior minister who is loyal to Mrs May added that the rebels “are going to wait to see whether, on a future occasion if something goes badly wrong, she decides on her own volition to go”.
Friends of Mr Shapps said a North Korea-style “atmosphere of fear” now pervaded the party, saying: “It is almost as if you dare to speak the truth your head is blown off. Grant has no intention of disappearing off the radar.
“It is exactly the same as North Korea – if you do a ‘vox pop’ on the street everyone will say how wonderful the dear leader is. But there are many more qui-
‘We have a leader who is unlucky and not competent enough. It is a mess – everyone thinks we have got to get rid of her’
‘The MPs’ WhatsApp group has become an extremist place to gather and spread bile’
eter colleagues who probably feel the same way [about her going].” A senior figure who is close to Mr Johnson commented on another missed opportunity by Mrs May.
He said: “The trouble with the party conference is it has not answered any questions. We are no further forward – we are further back. We have a leader who is unlucky and not competent enough. It is a mess – everyone thinks we have got to get rid of her.”
The question facing Mrs May’s critics is how – and when.
‘The whips have thrust Grant up in the air, poured petrol over him and set fire to him’