How long before Theresa May gets P45 for real?
The Prime Minister's quest for respect leads to standing ovations of sympathy - but will it end in a real P45?
Friday 6 October 2017 15:30, UK
It was by some measure the most excruciating prime ministerial podium moment in living memory.
That none of the three mishaps to afflict the Prime Minister in Manchester were her fault - a coughing fit, slipping signage, accepting a P45 from a comedian - means that for now no MP will make the mistake of being seen to take advantage.
But symbolism, optics, and being seen to be in charge are vital parts of being PM.
Theresa May does not seem to be a lucky general right now. And her party are not allowing her to make her own luck, either.
The real problem is that the extraordinary spectacle of her speech did accord with the political backdrop of the conference. A showcase designed to amplify the authority of a leader, and on this occasion to help a relaunch after the disastrous failed election gamble, only served to echo the very real political pain of the conference.
While the disloyal antics of the Foreign Secretary stole the headlines and the oxygen of publicity on multiple occasions, elsewhere in the conference there were other fundamental problems.
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MPs responded to the disruptive behaviour of Boris Johnson in undermining a leader who needed to assert herself by getting furious with him. Cabinet ministers were not shy in communicating their desire to humiliate him. Backbench MPs told him exactly what they thought to his face, on the conference circuit.
Other ministers counter-plotted, telling each other: "We've got our ** red lines too." After his speech one Cabinet minister said: "We're past peak Boris." Another minister piled in alongside other MPs in criticising his comments about Libya.
His dwindling band of supporters, meanwhile, continued to claim that his original intervention, the 4,000-word article that pre-empted her Florence speech, had prevented a Norway-style option for Brexit which Chancellor Phillip Hammond wanted to keep in play, alongside top civil servants.
Away from the newspaper front pages and the cameras, however, the conference has galvanised a coherent cross section of liberal Tories on the left of the party. They now say they will not go down without a fight, they will not allow what they suspect is a conscious drive for a No Deal Brexit and are starting to expect an election in 2019, not 2022, and are organising appropriately within the party.
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"We are handcuffed to this ship heading for an iceberg, it is only a matter of choosing when to jump off," says one minister.
And this is the problem. The lack of appearance of authority from the PM's speech was totemic of a lack of actual authority, at a time when Theresa May needed industrial quantities.
Diplomats from EU countries were at the conference to discover whether she would be able to deliver what she negotiates in Brussels later this month and in December.
Instead those diplomats witnessed repeated conference references to World War II. The German broadsheets communicated back to Berlin headlines about the "self-destruction of Theresa May".
As eyebrow-raising was the fact that at a dinner attended by the Chancellor business leaders were asked to put their hands up if they had attended the Labour conference, and later the Chancellor warned them not to "collaborate".
Quietly, the bemused donors to the party, which now sees a concentration on Brexit-supporters, have told bigwigs they expect a new face from the younger generation to fight the next election.
The whole point of Florence was to draw a line under Brexit to help the PM reassert her domestic policy programme. The point of Manchester was to reassert her authority in Cabinet and in her party before heading to Brussels as a leader with the political capital to elicit a compromise. That has not happened.
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The speech was never going to be easy, containing as it did an upfront apology to activists for the election gamble shambles.
The mishaps would not have mattered for a PM that had not actively disposed of David Cameron's majority, or for a PM with a less gargantuan and divisive task as the Brexit negotiation. But that is her situation.
Importantly, though ministers are still far more furious at Boris Johnson, some are quite uncomfortable at the actual content and coherence of the speech. A defence of the free market, which had energy price controls and state housebuilding at its core. It is a manoeuvre that a leader with verve, vision and authority might have been able to sell.
But it seems to be, for them, the same goods that were on offer in June, and not the way to defeat a resurgent left-wing populist Labour Party. That view is ominous, and outweighs the obvious respect for the PM's resilience in finishing her speech, and the revelation of her human side in public. Leaders need respect, not the sympathy of a protective standing ovation.
Everything needed to go right at the conference and at the speech, to pull off the political equivalent of landing a spacecraft on a dangerous asteroid.
It is difficult to imagine much more that could have gone wrong. It will not end this premiership. But Manchester confirms that she will not fight another election, and in blowing the lid of the depth of internal divides, increases the chance that moment will come sooner than expectations.