I feel so sorry for Theresa May after that speech – but she’s still the best Tory we’ve got

When Theresa May falls, Boris Johnson is ready to replace her: he’s squatting like a large yellow toad made of disloyalty, legs twitching in preparation for one lazy hop into the top job

Theresa May hold's the Chancellor's cough sweet, which didn't do her much good

(PA)

Mike the Headless Chicken strung out a pipette-fed existence for 18 months after his owner botched his slaughter by decapitation, drawing freak-show crowds to ogle at his grotesque existence. Theresa May has been Prime Minister for nearly 15 months and has just been put on a display at the Tory Party Conference that received a similar audience reaction.

Each morning, the maimed stump of her leadership begins another crawl across the political landscape. It’s horrible to watch, and yet the dumb persistence of her rule despite every outward sign screaming that she should stop makes her almost an object of wonder. Almost an object of wonder, but mostly an object of pity. Her speech was a heinous conflagration of error and an orgy of embarrassment that was excruciating to watch.

Even if it had gone off without a hitch, it would have obviously been the speech of a leader on the back foot – it had been trailed as a “defence of capitalism”, a hapless formulation that makes it sound like Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist brigands already have the throne room surrounded. But it wasn’t hitch-less. It was hitched to high heaven. Less a leader’s speech, more a communal anxiety dream.

The only reason it didn’t involve public nudity is surely that our collective unconscious had come up with so many more effective forms of mortification.

So many unimaginable things happened, like a prankster stepping up to the stage to hand May a P45. And her taking it. I’ve watched it several times, and every time the instant between that paper flapping towards her and her unwitting acceptance stretches out with the agonising hope that she might not do it. But we know from her eager clasp of the Tory leadership after the EU referendum that May has an irresistible urge to grab anything within arms-reach, no matter how bad it is for her – and so with this.

That provided a locked-in front page picture tomorrow, surely. But then what about the moment she was overcome with a coughing fit, as though she’d been visited by The Spirit of Iain Duncan Smith Past? Or when the slogan behind her started crumbling as its letters detached themselves from the screen and gently fell away? Or when Amber Rudd had to command Boris Johnson to join in with the standing ovation at the end, since Johnson was apparently more than happy to relax in his seat and enjoy someone else’s embarrassment for once?

And it’s partly his presence that makes it so hard to just embrace the schadenfreude of May’s teeter round the political grave-edge. When she falls, he’s ready to replace her: he’s squatting like a large yellow toad made of disloyalty, legs twitching in preparation for one lazy hop into the top job. No less gaffe-prone that May, but infinitely more disgraceful, and yet somehow convinced of his right to be prime minister.

So I feel sorry for May, but even more sorry for a country whose best hope – barring a fabulous coup by Ruth Davidson – is that the leader of the ruling party remains someone who is merely calamitous, rather than a posturing egotist whose relationship with the truth proceeds strictly on his own terms. Pity the prime minister, but more pity us, sliding towards Brexit in the care of a headless chicken.