Mrs May’s challenge

It can be guaranteed that when Theresa May addresses her party conference next Wednesday she will be cheered to the rafters by her Conservative audience, both out of loyalty and politeness. After last year’s calamitous speech, when the Prime Minister lost her voice temporarily and bits fell off the platform background, they will just be praying nothing goes wrong.

But their enthusiasm will mask an underlying disenchantment with her leadership. A survey conducted by the website Conservative Home shows that, on the eve of this year’s gathering in Birmingham, 83 per cent of respondents want her to resign before the fixed date for the next election in 2022. Some 40 per cent want her to go now.

To call this an inauspicious opening to the conference would be an understatement. With Boris Johnson’s denunciation of her Brexit policy in the Telegraph certain to cause fresh questions about the direction she is taking, Mrs May is facing the fight of her political life to convince her own party, let alone the country, that she is the right leader at this critical juncture in its recent history.

The reality is that where Brexit is concerned this conference is something that Mrs May needs to negotiate. She remains wedded to a policy that seems to have few supporters but the politics of this will not work itself through until after Birmingham. Her principal challenge is to fashion a coherent and attractive alternative to the siren voices of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party seeking to entice the British voter onto the rocks of hard-left socialism. A speech emphasising the virtues of capitalism, free markets and low taxes along the lines of the address she delivered in New York this week would be most welcome.