Theresa May: Being Prime Minister does not make me miserable
2 min read
Theresa May has insisted being Prime Minister does not make her "miserable" despite repeated criticism of her performance in the job.
The Prime Minister also stressed that she has not been "undermined" by Boris Johnson's repeated challenges to her authority over Brexit.
Mrs May was speaking as she prepares for her keynote speech to the Conservative conference in Manchester.
Pressure from party activists is mounting on her after the disastrous decision to hold a snap election in June, which led to the Tories losing their Commons majority.
The mood at the conference has been noticeably downbeat - apart from the rousing reception given to Boris Johnson's own speech this afternoon.
Asked by Channel Four's Jon Snow why the event seemed so "miserable", Mrs May said: "The people I meet haven't been down, they've been upbeat. They are upbeat about the arguments we need to make, the battle of ideas we will now be entering into, showing why it is that free market economies are those that actually provide for people, provide for people's livelihoods, provide a better future for people."
And asked whether she enjoyed being Prime Minister, she replied: "Yes. It's not miserable, Jon, and the reason it's not miserable is because as Prime Minister I can ensure that government takes decisions that really improve people's lives."
In a separate interview with the BBC, Mrs May faced repeated questions about Mr Johnson - who angered Downing Street with a 4,200-word Daily Telegraph article setting out his Brexit vision, and an interview in The Sun setting out his four red lines for the negotiations with Brussels.
Asked if the Foreign Secretary was undermining her, she said: "It doesn't undermine what I am doing at all. There is a lot of talk about Boris's job or this job or that job inside the Cabinet. Actually, what people are concerned about - they don't want us to be thinking about our jobs, they want us to be thinking about their jobs and their futures."
Earlier today, the Prime Minister had again refused to say that Mr Johnson was unsackable and insisted she did not want to have a Cabinet of "yes men".
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