Newspaper headlines: May 'on final warning after speech shambles' By BBC News

Staff Published duration 5 October 2017

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The Huffpost UK website chooses an image of the prime minister swigging water to control her cough, alongside the headline "The Cough Drop".

Its executive editor of politics, Paul Waugh, describes how "the PM's dogged persistence won her sympathy from her own tribe" but warns that she "is now in danger of being neither liked, feared nor respected, merely pitied".

Jason Beattie, in the Daily Mirror , warns that a position that "now relies on sympathy, not respect" is no way to win votes, adding that "the Tories are lumbered with supporting an ill-fated leader whose speech will become a metaphor for a party in poor health and struggling to find its voice".

The Times says Tory sources blamed the repeated standing ovations - led by ministers in an attempt to let her recover her voice - for loosening the magnets that were securing the motto on the wall.

The Daily Telegraph quotes former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell and a professional vocal coach as criticising Theresa May for failing to seek help to preserve her voice ahead of the speech.

Her former chief of staff, Nick Timothy, tells the paper the blame for a disastrous week lies with the whole government.

While Conservative former cabinet minister Lord Tebbit says she has been let down by advisers "lacking in experience and ability".

It points out the "inevitable parallels" with the Tory conference address given in 2003 by Iain Duncan Smith who was forced to stand down as leader three weeks later.

Jenni Russell, in the Times , agrees that Mr Johnson "was the only cabinet minister looking alert and cheerful".

But she reports that support for him among his colleagues is evaporating amid an "icy realism that, severe as the party's problems are, Boris's fantasies are not the answer".

One Conservative MP tells the Financial Times that Mrs May's critics have already begun plotting her demise.

But the paper adds that most MPs fear a chaotic leadership contest if she is ousted before Brexit.