PM must prove to Conservatives she can strike Brexit deal
Theresa May will be judged at conference - with many looking at past performances as well as keeping an eye on negotiations now.
Sunday 30 September 2018 15:53, UK
Last year's travails in Theresa May's conference speech were extraordinary, excruciating, very public, and almost all - from falling letters, to coughing fits and wandering comedians with a P45 "signed by Boris" - not her fault.
But they did represent Mrs May's luck at the time.
In the subsequent year, the PM has lost several cabinet ministers, kept Brexit negotiations on the road, achieved draft deals on citizens rights and a transition period, struck a strong note on the Salisbury attack, passed a budget without a major U-turn and - in current circumstances - the mere fact of her giving another conference speech this Wednesday should also count as a success.
She is up on the expectations of one year ago in Manchester.
Her underlying problem is not the 2017 speech; it is her 2016 one from the very same Birmingham stage she will deliver her address from on Wednesday.
That speech, notable for the "citizens of nowhere" refrain, set up expectations within her own party for an uncompromising hard or clean Brexit, and yet it also set up so publicly the red lines that have led to the current state of EU rejection.
So when Boris Johnson decided to blanket the start of the Conservative conference with suggestions not just that Chequers is wrong, or dead, but that it was "deranged" and "preposterous", the origins of that betrayal narrative can be rooted back to her speech two years ago when she communicated that the UK would not be subject to European Court of Justice jurisdiction.
:: Theresa May hints she could compromise on Chequers plan in Brexit talks
Chequers maintains some forms of that jurisdiction, at least indirectly in the market for goods and agriculture.
A reasonable compromise, it can and will be argued. But was this predictable direction of travel really signalled two years ago?
Likewise, red lines were further detailed at the subsequent Lancaster House speech on not joining the European Economic Area or reforming a customs union with the EU.
At that point the PM changed her language from wanting and expecting "frictionless" trade to "as frictionless as possible".
At Chequers, she embraced again the promise of post-Brexit "frictionless" trade as the aim of her deal - for both the Northern Ireland border and for manufacturers with "just-in-time" supply chains, such as car-makers.
The very point of Chequers is to try to achieve frictionless trade but outside the framework that created it in the first place - the single market and customs union.
Those red lines have been accepted by Brussels, but the idea of maintaining friction-free trade has been rejected in European capitals as the first step towards destroying the single market.
Her immediate challenge is coming up with a detailed Northern Ireland backstop compromise in the next fortnight, and getting that through both cabinet, her party, and her partners the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
DUP leader Aileen Foster will come to Birmingham on Tuesday, so expect an important meeting as both leaders face internal pressure.
All of this will drain the ability of the party to make news on domestic policy.
However, the PM may discover renewed purpose from Labour's lively conference last week, which provides an opportunity to rally the troops against Jeremy Corbyn's left-wing populism.
Labour's offer to "help" the PM is designed to spike her guns if she tries to attack the opposition as a party promising a second referendum hellbent on sabotaging negotiations.
The well-organised "Chuck Chequers" wing of her party are confident of victory.
But the PM has to show more than rhetorical fight. There is some material to assert herself and sell her Chequers plan or some version of it.
Today, she was selling it as "a free trade deal" and the only way to keep the UK together. She was criticising the European Union for not detailing their complaints.
The route out of Birmingham is clear - to persuade her own troops that she is the only Tory general who can get a deal with the EU and take on a newly confident left-wing populist Labour Party.
But she also needs a flexible negotiating mandate from her party to close a deal.
To succeed here in Birmingham she needs to learn the lessons of the mistakes of her past two speeches.
If not, there are plenty waiting in the wings eager to pounce.