Theresa May’s Conservative Party Conference Speech
On October 3, 2017, the British Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a speech historians are already judging as the worst in modern British political history. May’s position was already tenuous. With Brexit looming large and infighting tearing apart her cabinet because she’d just lost her parliamentary majority by holding a totally unnecessary snap election, even those within her own party were howling for her blood. This speech, if you can call it that, only made the wolves hungrier.
Almost everything that could go wrong did. And fast. Mere minutes into her address, a British comedian famous for high-profile practical jokes managed to make it to the podium and hand the prime minister a P45 (a tax letter you receive at the end of your employment, a bit like the American “pink slip”). Then May’s vocal cords abandoned her, leaving her coughing, rasping and inaudibly whispering her way through the final (P)45 minutes.
To top it all off, some of the characters from the pretty un-inspirational sign behind her started dropping to the ground. So what originally read as, “Building a country that works for everyone” ended up reading, “Building a country that works or everyone”. Then again, with the word country in the text, things could have been a lot, lot worse.
Reactions to the speech ranged from the stunned to the furious. When interviewed by The Sun newspaper, one conservative minister eloquently summarised his response as, “what the f-king f-k f-k f-k. F-k.” Many called for May’s resignation and the appointment of a new party leader. Her cabinet members were kinder, however, praising her “mettle” for making it to the end. Though with recent accusations of the prime minister being robotic, they might have chosen their words more carefully.
Throughout the speech, Theresa May kept referring to the “British Dream”. As a Brit I have no idea what this means. I suspect it has nothing to do with the Brexiteer dream, which traditionally involves standing in long queues, waving little red and white flags and invoking our God-given right of telling foreigners to go home.
But as her address dragged on I began to understand. That for many, this was the British Dream — watching a lying politician flounder like a clown in a minefield as they publicly botch their way through an oratorical car crash. And that in unfaltering service to the national interest, at last our strong and stable prime minister was delivering.