May speech sketch: not bad, nothing catastrophic happened

Theresa May kicked off her keynote speech at Tory conference this year with a humble reference to the omnishambles of last year: “You’ll have to excuse me if I cough during this speech; I’ve been up all night supergluing the backdrop.”

It is hard to forget last year’s train-wreck – the backdrop falling down, Ms May’s coughing fit, a comedian handing her a P45 in the middle of proceedings. So, this year was a marked improvement; but it was not a high barrier to beat.

May danced onto the stage to ABBA’s hit Dancing Queen in a moment that has divided opinion. Was it massively cringe? Or genuinely sweet? Either way, she demonstrated levels of self-awareness she was perhaps not previously thought capable of.

The speech covered a lot of ground: the adversarial state of our politics, the NHS, security, business, housing, austerity, and Brexit of course. Underpinning everything she said was the need for unity and cooperation in the face of challenging times. That message was a dig at Boris; notably his slamming of her Chequers proposal in his fringe-event speech yesterday.

She began with the observation that in politics over the past few years “something has changed for the worse.” Diane Abbot receives more racist and misogynist messages today then she did when she first became an MP, she said. And while you “do not have to agree with a word Diane Abbott says” you should “believe passionately in her right to say it, free from threats and abuse.” This was met with applause, but feels a bit rich coming from a party that itself orchestrated a large-scale attacks on Abbott during the 2017 general election.

May was right to call on the Tory party to “set a standard of decency”, to rise above abuse and “make a positive case” for Conservative values. “Conservatives will always stand up for a politics that unites us rather than divides us.”

“That used to be Labour’s position too” she said solemnly. Using this as a platform to rattle through Labour’s economic failings she then launched into a comparison between the Labour stars of old (Dennis Healy, Neil Kinnock, Clement Attlee) and Jeremy Corbyn. “Would Clement Attlee, Churchill’s trusted deputy during the Second World War, have told British Jews they didn’t know the meaning of anti-semitism?”

“What has befallen Labour is a national tragedy,” she said. And then, reusing a line from PMQs just weeks ago she said: “That is what Jeremy Corbyn has done to the Labour Party, it is our duty, in this Conservative Party, to make sure he can never do it to our country.”

Moving on to the NHS, she referred to the recent cash injection of an extra £394m per week. The Tories granted the NHS in honour of its 70th birthday – the largest “in its history.”

Talking about security and foreign policy gave her ample opportunity for Corbyn bashing, notably his unwillingness to condemn Russia over the Salisbury poisonings.

“He poses as a humanitarian. But he says that military action to save lives is only justified with the approval of the Security Council – effectively giving Russia a veto. I say no – we cannot outsource our conscience to the Kremlin.” This was the best received moment of the entire speech, and deservedly so.

On Brexit May doubled down on her Chequers proposal, but didn’t say much more than she has said before. She emphasised the need to honour the result of the referendum, and her absolute refusal to break up the Union. “Even if we don’t agree on every part of this proposal we need to come together,” she added in a pointed reference to Boris Johnson. People who try to run off with their own perfect vision of Brexit “risk having no Brexit at all.” It’s somehow unlikely however that Boris will be flustered…

Corbyn’s speech last week focussed on the legacy of Tory austerity, so May was wise to address the issue, while deftly skirting around the wealth of damning anecdotal evidence of the hardship austerity policies had caused.

The defining event for the new generation of voters was the legacy of the collapse of the banks and the ensuing recession, May noted. “Thanks to Labour the country was not prepared… it fell to our party to clear up the mess.” Moving through the vital need for an overhaul in housing policy and the litany of Labour’s economic failings she ended on a pretty astonishing statement: “A decade after the financial crash people need to know the austerity it led to is over.”

Rounding off, she reversed Labour’s favourite slogan. She promised a Tory party “not for the few, not even for the many, but for everyone who works hard and plays by the rules.”

The verdict? Pretty good, possibly her best speech yet. Nothing went catastrophically wrong. The repetitive calls for unity and cooperation especially on Brexit had a slight air of desperation, but ultimately she was thorough, thoughtful, and at points, even charming.