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Set the stage

“Building a country that works for everyone” announced her backdrop. Except it turns out the Conservatives couldn’t even build a sign for everyone, as the letter F dropped from the wall. (Leading many to joke about telling the Tories to “eff off”). Shortly afterwards, the E disappeared – but this is Manchester, the city of rave: Es are dropped a lot. At the end of the speech, one journalist tweeted a picture of what remained of the sign, a few sad letters, like the dregs of Scrabble tiles in the bag. It’s difficult to take the Conservatives’ message seriously when it’s literally disintegrating in real time.

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Don’t be sick

In fairness, it isn’t May’s fault she was ill. She had better hope she perks up, though, because soon we won’t have a publicly funded NHS to speak of, and good luck with getting sickness benefit or, you know, a GP appointment. It might have made more sense after the first splattering of lung pushed its way up the oesophagus to abort the speech or skip straight to the meat of policy. As someone in an already weakened position, the optics were … how should one put this? Not good.

It did, however, mean we got to witness the hilarious moment when May was given a standing ovation for receiving a glass of water from a runner. Because, honestly, that is the level of competence we are operating at at the moment.

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Don’t get pranked

It’s sort of incredible how, just weeks after the country’s terror threat was at critical, a prankster – who turned out to be comedian Simon Brodkin – was able to get this close to the prime minister. Handing her a P45 was a neat trick, but the most absurd thing here was that May TOOK IT. Don’t take it!

Theresa May's speech was such a nightmare she must have been disappointed to discover she wasn't naked

It was when the set started falling apart that the Prime Minister realised everything was going to be all right. Phew, she thought. Thank goodness for that. I’ll just glance down at myself now, see that I’m fully naked, then all my teeth will fall out and I’ll wake up and start getting ready for that speech that I’ve got to give to save my career.

But, much to her disappointment, the Prime Minister found that she was not naked. The cameras were rolling. The hall was packed. At her feet was a P45 form she’d just willingly taken from a serial prankster. There were still ten pages of a seventeen-page speech to go, and she was entirely unable to speak.

It was a nightmare so richly layered it was almost as if it had been directed by Christopher Nolan. Time passed, seconds warped into hours, and as Theresa May moved deeper and deeper down through the levels of her own never-ending anxiety dream it became impossible to see how she might ever find her way out.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/theresa-may-conference-speech-nightmare-simon-brodkin-lee-nelson-prankster-p45-a7982876.html