Andrew Picken: Perhaps it’s time that Tory HQ just let Theresa be Theresa

ARRIVING at Downing Street for the first time in 1979 Margaret Thatcher paraphrased St. Francis of Assisi to tell waiting reporters: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony and where there is despair, may we bring hope”.

Fast-forward nearly four decades and Theresa May appears to be bringing discord and despair where once hopes of a triple-figure Commons majority loomed large for the Tories.

The wheels are spinning off a Tory campaign which was meant to deliver a decisive mandate for her Brexit talks, and no matter where the Prime Minister travels she seems to stir up more apathy than hope.

Let’s not get carried away. The Tories have been ahead in every opinion poll to date but what has changed since the predictions of a cricket score for the Tories just four weeks ago?

In short, Jeremy Corbyn has got better and May has barely raised her head above the trenches of trope.

Corbyn’s team has won a few tactical battles – leaking its manifesto early to maximise publicity and turning up to last week’s TV debate knowing May wouldn’t – but his performances and stamina are also markedly improved.

On the other side May has barely nudged above bang average for weeks now – bar a better turn on Question Time last Friday – and was mostly on the defensive over major policy U-turns. She has failed to shake the look of someone deeply unconformable with the circus around being Prime Minister, instead delivering responses with the air of a bright student who has been rote learning answers for an exam.

Perhaps her advisers just need to loosen the messaging shackles a bit.

Outshining the Plymouth Herald – which last week became an internet hit after complaining of getting “absolutely nothing” in a three-minute chat with the Prime Minister – The Sunday Post had 10 minutes with May last month.

She didn’t really answer any of our questions but then what top politician actually does these days? In this brief exchange she came across as a lot warmer and – whisper it – personable than on television.

Perhaps they just need to let “Theresa be Theresa” rather than “Theresa the Focus Group-tested Message Deliverer” – especially given that she couldn’t be more “middle England” if she tried.

There are parallels with Gordon Brown – now a master orator away from the pressures of being PM – but unable to get the message across while holding the top political conch.

Middling May is causing headaches for the Scottish Tories too.

Ruth Davidson has tenacity by the bucketload but has spent too much of this campaign on the back foot defending headaches sent north on a Conservative Central Office chariot.

It’s also understood her party machine is being hampered by some of the chaos emanating from its English counterpart.

Jumping back to Margaret Thatcher on the steps of Downing Street 38 years ago, the last thing she said before she went through the famous black door was: “There is now work to be done.”

Something which May’s team must be painfully aware of as we approach the final few days of the campaign.