Despite what you’ve heard, Theresa May’s speech has united the party and halted Boris Johnson’s leadership ambitions

All things considered, Boris Johnson’s tactical retreat from talk of a leadership bid in his speech yesterday couldn’t have been better timed. In the aftermath of Theresa May’s whirlwind address to the Tory Party Conference, who, now, would want to be the one to stab her in the back?

Theresa May was renowned for so long for branding the Tories the “Nasty Party” at the conference in 2002, and it is a label they have found difficult to shed ever since. May, meanwhile, has been caught in No Man’s Land since the general election. With Boris hovering, Hindenberg-like, in the background, and Priti Patel all but volunteering to rival him, the knives have been well and truly out for months. Moggmentum has been irrepressible all week; even if he doesn’t want the keys to No 10, the right of the party has been shifting restlessly against the Prime Minister.

Even before she opened her mouth, this looked to be a premiership taking its final breaths.

Nobody expected her to genuinely struggle for breath. What followed was excruciating, but profound. After all the sniping, the vitriol and the venom, the party faced their leader as she underwent humiliation after humiliation. A prankster handed her a P45. Her voice deserted her. The letters began to fall from the backdrop. Her voice went again. And even the Nasty Party, ready to hound her to her political grave, couldn’t bear to watch any more.

They rallied to her like family to an ailing matriarch. They howled as Simon Brodkin was dragged from the hall. The cabinet really was a nest of signing birds, rising as one to applaud and cheer her on. Rounds of clapping broke out to give her respite from speaking. A dull speech became compelling viewing. And before our eyes, the Maybot became human.

The party can do nothing now except present a united front. To break rank and attack May would appear both cruel and opportunist. The electorate may not have forgiven Theresa for her previous blunders at the ballot box, but can you really envisage them doing anything but turn on the person who takes her out?

But in among all this, much of the substance of the speech could easily be missed. It mattered less what she said, but how she said it. The policies, however, signal a definite shift to the left. Policies labelled Marxist in the past, such as a cap on energy prices, were promised, while the decision was also taken to announce that organ donation would switch from opt-in to opt-out. Illiberal decisions that will upset many, and certainly not what you’d call Conservative. Proof, if ever it were needed, that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party really are now setting the national agenda.

This will horrify the Tory right. The party conference, and the Prime Minister’s overdue demise, was meant to be their opportunity to wrestle back control of their party, and by a comedy of errors, the moment has passed. Her policy announcements are unlikely to win back too many voters who deserted at the last election, while a proper Conservative line would at least have given the Tories some of their old identity back. But Theresa May has worked long, and hard, to detoxify their image. The party does at least recognise the need to have a heart.

If they are to outlast Labour’s current incarnation, they will need to bear that in mind. What they do now will define them for many years to come. Will they be the party that put aside personal ambition to prop up their battered leader? Or the one that compounded their existential crisis by dissolving into infighting, ushering in socialists in the midst of Brexit?

Though many are no friend of the Prime Minister, the Conservatives must recognise there is no bright young backbencher to dig them out now. It’s May or bust.

David Cameron might have fled at the first sign of trouble, but his most famous slogan is more relevant now than ever. Finally, his party must face up to what it means to be all in this together.