Dancing May announces end to austerity and promises ‘better days ahead’

In her crucial keynote speech to the Conservative conference in Birmingham, Mrs May said next year’s post-Brexit Spending Review will set out a programme of increased investment in public services, as a mark that the decade of cuts following the financial crash is coming to an end.

And she announced a new cancer strategy to increase early detection of the illness and save 55,000 lives a year by 2028, along with a ninth successive annual freeze in fuel duty.

Mrs May said she was lifting the cap on councils borrowing to fund new developments, in a move which aides said could lead to additional investment of an estimated £1 billion in as many as 10,000 new homes a year.

In a message to voters weary of belt-tightening, the PM said: “Because you made sacrifices, there are better days ahead.

“A decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off”.”

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell dismissed Mrs May’s austerity claim as “a complete con”, saying; “The Government has already told us that spending for the next four years will be hit by many more vicious cuts. Nothing, sadly, has changed.”

In a speech designed to rally her party behind her following a conference riven by differences over Brexit, Mrs May warned that squabbling over the details of EU withdrawal might mean “ending up with no Brexit at all”.

Standing firmly by her Brexit plan, denounced by Boris Johnson as a “constitutional outrage”, Mrs May promised: “If we stick together and hold our nerve, I know we can get a deal that delivers for Britain.”

She did not use the word “Chequers” – the name of her country residence where the plan was agreed by Cabinet in July – but aides insisted that this was not intended to signal any shift away from her blueprint.

There was also no mention of the former foreign secretary, who won thunderous applause from 1,500 activists on Tuesday as he called on her to “chuck” the Brexit plan agreed at her country residence in July.

But she delivered a stinging riposte to his reported “f*** business” comment, saying the business community should know that “there is a four-letter word to describe what we Conservatives want to do to you – it has a single syllable, it is of Anglo-Saxon derivation, it ends in the letter K. Back businesses.”

Less than an hour before taking the stage in Birmingham, Mrs May was hit by a call for her removal from former minister James Duddridge, who said she was “incapable” of providing the leadership Tories need.

But she did her best to appear carefree as she sashayed on to the stage to Abba hit Dancing Queen and joked about the coughing fit and collapsing stage backdrop which marred her calamitous conference speech in Manchester last year.

The reprise of the dance steps from her recent African trip surprised not only Tory delegates and TV viewers but even her closest aides and husband Philip, as Mrs May had kept her plans secret.

In an upbeat message to activists and voters, she declared: “If we come together, there is no limit to what we can achieve. Our future is in our hands.”

She launched a ferocious assault on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, describing the takeover of the party by the left as “a national tragedy” and his policies of nationalisation and shares for workers as “bogus solutions that would makes things worse”.

In a clear pitch for mainstream voters turned off by Mr Corbyn’s left-wing economic agenda and rows over anti-Semitism, she said she wanted the “decent, moderate and patriotic” Conservatives to be “a party for the whole country”.

She made a grab for traditionally Labour territory by saying that the NHS “embodies our principles as Conservatives” and boasting of the presence in the Tory front ranks of immigrant’s son Sajid Javid, former Barnardo’s girl Esther McVey and lesbian mother-to-be Ruth Davidson.

In the face of Labour’s appeal to those suffering from the effects of austerity, Mrs May said Tories must “defend free markets, because it is ordinary working people who benefit”.

But she acknowledged that, a decade after the 2008 crash, the after-effects were still being felt by many households.

“Some markets are still not working in the interests of ordinary people,” she said. “Some people still feel that our economy isn’t working for them.

“Our mission as Conservatives must be to show them that we can build an economy that does.”

She promised to “make markets work in the interests of ordinary people again”, citing initiatives to toughen corporate governance rules, provide protection for gig economy workers and cap energy prices.

And she warned she was ready to take further action against utility firms which punish loyal customers with higher prices.

To applause from activists, she said that “sound finances” would remain an essential part of the Government’s economic policy, but would no longer be “the limit of our ambition”.

“The British people need to know that the end is in sight,” said the Prime Minister.

“And our message to them must be this – We get it. We are not just a party to clean up a mess, we are the party to steer a course to a better future.

“So when we’ve secured a good Brexit deal for Britain, at the Spending Review next year we will set out our approach for the future.

“Debt as a share of the economy will continue to go down, support for public services will go up.”

Mrs May was joined on stage by Philip as activists gave her a standing ovation after her 64-minute speech.

CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn welcomed the PM’s “unambiguous call to back business”.

But the SNP’s Ian Blackford said: “The Prime Minister danced around the key issues – the disastrous impact of Tory austerity and a Tory hard Brexit.”