Prankster, coughing fits interrupts May’s keynote speech

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s bid to reassert her dwindling authority was marred on Wednesday by a keynote speech interrupted by repeated coughing fits and a prankster.           

On top of all this, letters of May’s slogan falling off the stage also played a role in the interruption during the Conservative Party’s annual conference which she wanted use to bring her divided party together.

The British PM wanted to use her speech to pitch herself as the only person able to deliver Brexit and keep opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn out of power.

She started by apologising for her botched bet on a snap June election which stripped her party of its majority in parliament.

May then pitched a revitalised “British Dream” for which she proposed fixing broken markets and uniting the country.

But her flow was interrupted by British comedian Simon Brodkin, who handed her a P45 letter, a document given to employees when they leave their job.

The document had been “signed” by the comedian using the name of her ambitious Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.

TRT World's Simon McGregor-Wood reports.

Coughing fits

May then began a coughing fit and was repeatedly forced to take drinks of water, even coughing into her glass, and was proffered a lozenge from her finance minister, Philip Hammond.

While she was speaking, several letters fell off the slogans behind her on the stage.

Some Twitter users seized on images of the missing letters to poke fun at the Conservatives: one said their glue was even failing to hold the party together.

The 61-year-old May won standing ovations for pressing on with the hour-long address, in which she took a more personal tone - saying she did not mind being called the “Ice Maiden” and describing her “great sadness” at not having children.

Her speech sought to offer party activists a renewal of Conservative values while making new promises to a younger generation and those “just about managing”.

"Conservatism"

“This is a Conservatism I believe in, a Conservatism of fairness and justice and opportunity for all, a Conservatism that keeps the British dream alive for a new generation,” she told the cheering crowd.

“That’s what I’m in this for,” she said, in a phrase she repeated at least eight times. “That’s what we must all be in this for.”

May, who was warmly embraced by her husband on stage after she had finished speaking, later poked fun at her coughing fit by tweeting an image of cough lozenges and medicine laid beside a paper copy of the address and her prime ministerial briefcase.

Brexit minister David Davis told Reuters it had been “a very good speech, it hit all the issues people care about”. Other cabinet ministers also applauded May.

Many in the audience said her coughing fit and the sudden appearance by the comedian had helped to win them over.

“Actually, if all that stuff hadn’t happened, it would have just been another kind of wooden presentation,” said Pippa Smith, a 26-year-old party member from London. “It was a good speech, but I think actually it did her a favour.”

“What a disaster”

Nigel Farage, the former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, said May was so useless that if she remained as leader then Labour’s Corbyn would soon be in power.

Labour lawmaker Seema Malhotra said: “It just couldn’t get worse than this. What a disaster. It’s a shambles, not a government.”

 But there are few obvious successors yet visible besides Johnson, who is unpopular with some Conservative lawmakers. Some activists fear that a divisive leadership contest would pave the way for an election that Corbyn’s Labour could win.