ANALYSIS: Theresa May's 'British Dream' speech turns into a nightmare
3 min read
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Theresa May's speech was meant to relaunch her leadership, silence the doubters and prove that she is still the right person to lead the country.
It did none of those things.
"Many pay little attention to great conferences and gatherings like this," she said at one point - and how she will be hoping they were not watching this morning.
It's often said that people only remember the odd moment from conference speeches - Blair's "hand of history", IDS' "turning up the volume" - but that was turned on its head by the Prime Minister.
After a confident enough start, the PM suddenly slowed down as a bespectacled man waved a P45 form in front of her face.
"Boris asked me to give this to you," quipped comedian Simon Brodkin, before he was whisked out of the conference hall by security.
As optics go for a big reputation-saving conference speech, it doesn't get much more awful than that. Putting it bluntly, May must have wished it was her being escorted from the building instead, anything to get away from the unfolding horror of her keynote address to the party faithful.
If that wasn't bad enough, May began coughing - and for a while it looked as though she would never stop. That led to the pathetic spectacle of Tory delegates lengthily applauding to give her time to get back on track.
To add to the increasingly farcical atmosphere, Philip Hammond was called into action to hand his boss a cough sweet.
Then the letters F and E fell off the PM's backdrop, leaving her standing in front of the legend: 'A COUNTRY THAT WORKS OR EVERYON'.
The speech itself had some reasonable announcements - on housing, energy costs and mental health - though nothing that is going to have the nation's youth switching in droves from Labour.
There was also what many Tory MPs and members will consider a welcome admission of guilt over the general election disaster, though some may feel that "I am sorry" has taken far too long to fall from her lips.
In terms of May's short-term job security, the fundamentals have not changed.
But as metaphors go, the sight of a beleaguered Prime Minister struggling to make it to the end of her conference speech while the set literally falls down around her ears takes some beating.
Katie Perrior, her former director of communications, said beforehand that May would need to "blow the doors off" with her speech.
Sadly for the PM, she also managed to destroy the engine, smash the windows and leave Manchester with the exhaust pipe dragging along the motorway.
