Prime minister suggests there was too much top-down control in campaign that delivered a net loss of 13 seats

Theresa May has conceded her party was not ready when she called a snap general election in which the Conservatives lost their majority despite a hefty lead in opinion polls.

The prime minister said she had failed to communicate the message she gave on the steps of Downing Street after winning the Tory leadership last year, and that her words about making the country work for everyone “didn’t come through in the election”.

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She was speaking before the Conservative party conference in Manchester this week, in an interview with the House magazine conducted by the former Conservative leader Michael Howard.

The prime minister hinted that she believed there had been too much top-down control in the campaign, which delivered the Tories a net loss of 13 seats and forced May to strike a pact with the DUP in order to remain in power.



“There weren’t the links with the centre [of the party] that there should have been. That’s one of the issues we need to look at,” she said.

“With a snap election, of course you have to do a little more from the centre, in relation to the selection of candidates. But I think it’s in relation to ensuring that the campaign at the centre is reflecting what’s happening at the grassroots.”

May, who is likely to face questions over her continuing leadership during the four-day conference, said it was difficult to prepare adequately for a snap election.



“People have to work quite quickly to put their local campaigns together, and you do get slightly more of a central approach,” she said. “We need to look at that very carefully, and to make sure we get the connection between what people want to do locally and the central campaign.”

The prime minister said the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity message and pro-nationalisation platform meant the Conservatives had to remake the case for free markets – a key theme of a speech she gave at the Bank of England on Thursday.

“As somebody who was heavily involved in the pre-1997 Conservative government, so much work was done to get that message across, of the importance of free markets, of sound management of the economy, of global trade. And sadly we do see that that message has been lost,” she said.



May said she believed it was down to complacency and a younger disillusioned generation who had grown up post-1997.



“I think in a sense we thought those arguments were done and dusted,” she said. “That everybody understood it. That we didn’t have to go back to them. I think now we see we do have to go back to them.

“We’ve got to make that case all over again, because there is a generation who have grown up in a different environment and perhaps haven’t seen the problems that can occur when you don’t believe in free markets and sound management of the economy.”