She’s a terrible ham, Theresa May. She has that Gordon Brown affliction of having to remember when to force a smile, to affect an emotion, to gesticulate at the appropriate moment.

Her eyebrows arch in emphasis at all the wrong times, lagging a few seconds behind the sentence they are meant to be emphasising. Theresa May giving a speech is like watching a badly dubbed foreign movie.

And she’s a god-awful dancer. Seeing her emerge from the wings, all coat-hanger jointy and hopelessly out of time to Abba’s “Dancing Queen”, the scene was perfectly set-up for yet another demonstration of why she is almost certainly the worst British prime minister since the war. And by war I mean the War of the Roses.

But such dreadfully low expectation cuts both ways.

When, on the oh-so rare occasion (I can really only think of one previous example; her first speech as PM) she competently delivers a coherent speech, the surprise somehow magnifies its effect.

She almost becomes convincing.

Today was such an occasion. So let us get this out of the way now and say it straight: Theresa May just delivered a very good speech.

It was, in contrast with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour conference speech in Liverpool last week, sunny in disposition. And it was clever.

She wasted no time in driving that stiletto into the heart of Labour’s electoral vulnerability. And she let the ghosts of Labour do it for her.

What would Neil Kinnock say about Labour MPs needing police protection at the own conference? What would Navy-veteran Jim Callaghan say about asking Russian Intelligence about our own security services’ findings? What would Clement Attlee say about the fear many jews in Britain feel about the prospect of a Labour government?

How utterly galling for a Labour supporter to hear a Tory prime minister beating you up with the imagined thoughts of your own party’s greats. Especially effective since we can all too easily imagine what Kinnock, Callaghan and Attlee would think of Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum.

She even usurped their slogan, exposing its weakness in a way that had escaped me until she said: We’re not a party for the many, but for everyone.

There is the issue with “For the many, not the few”. As a marketing slogan it’s flawed. Which many do they mean? Am I one of the many? Are they for me, or against me? There are simply too many people in the UK who don’t know the answer to that question for Labour to assume anything come another General Election.

And she dog-whistled like crazy to the UKIP floaters upon whom the Tories will have to rely when that election comes. Not since Mel Gibson in Braveheart has the word “freedom” been so exploited for cheap effect.

How well that trick has been mastered. Ever since Paul McKenna gave the Leave campaign their hypnotic “Take Back Control”; the repetition of simple, but powerfully emotive, words and phrases, over and over, until that’s all you can hear.

Freedom... Security... Freedom... Security. Sooner or later, people are actually going to believe it.

Clever and coherent this speech was for sure, but it was also a new highpoint in her hypocrisy.

Every single sentence crafted by her speechwriting team was a stark reminder that Theresa May is still here.

The sheer nerve of even daring to mention the Windrush generation, never mind asserting them as evidence of inclusive Tory values, when she was the very Home Secretary whose hostile environment policy literally destroyed the lives and livelihoods of so many of those immigrants.

The sheer nerve of referencing Sajid Javid’s Pakistani immigrant father, when Home Secretary Javid’s new immigration policies would have meant his dad would never even have been allowed through passport control today.

And the absolute brass neck of accusing Labour of not “acting in the public interest” over Brexit but “in their own political interest.” Lest we forget, this Brexit chaos into which the UK has been plunged was never anything more than an attempt by May’s predecessor (remember him? the one with his trotters up in Nice) to keep the Tories from civil war over Europe.

So. Clever, coherent, hypocritical and galling. What else did we learn from Mrs May’s Birmingham speech? Two significant things, I think.

Firstly, that she is, covertly and deliberately, intent on taking Britain out of the European Union without any deal. Today she ruled out both Canada and Norway models. Last week, the EU ruled out Chequers. She knows her own party won’t tolerate any more compromise. No Deal is all that’s left on the table. So get down to Tesco now and stock up on avocados.

And secondly, she is going nowhere, at least not voluntarily. There was nothing valedictory about this speech. No hint that this was the last conference speech she’d ever give as party leader. Every single sentence crafted by her speechwriting team was a stark reminder that, despite the perceived wisdom she stands upon a hair-trigger trap-door, Theresa May is still here.

A reminder to us all that, however bad a presenter she is, however bad a dancer, however bad a prime minister, if Theresa May is anything, she is a survivor.

And a reminder, I suspect, to herself.

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