Theresa May remains deaf to this message about Brexit – leader comment

The big winners in the English council elections were the Liberal Democrats, but Theresa May insists the central message is to “get on and deliver Brexit”.

Theresa May was almost certainly delighted that the results of council elections in England just happened to be announced on the same day as her speech at the Scottish Conservatives’ party conference.

As more than 1,200 Conservative councillors lost their seats, she simply had to be in Aberdeen, talking up the Scottish Conservatives.

She noted the Scottish party had 115 councillors in 2012, but now had 264 “making a real difference in communities across Scotland”. However mentioning the numbers, in the context of the results coming in as she spoke, only served to highlight the scale of the losses.

Much of the Prime Minister’s speech was spent attacking the SNP, although this was strictly for internal party purposes. Any attack on an opponent in the midst of a devastating defeat is unlikely to score a telling blow, but there’s nothing like an external enemy to help bind a group of people together at a time of crisis.

It may have gone down well in the hall – calling Ruth Davidson “the boss” was a good move – but south of the border the Conservatives were in disarray. Earlier, as she spoke to the Welsh Conservative Party’s conference, May was interrupted by a heckler who said: “Why don’t you resign? ... we don’t want you.” For some, the fact she has already promised to quit after Brexit isn’t good enough, it seems.

May said the message of the elections was “just get on and deliver Brexit”. But given the biggest winners were the Liberal Democrat party, which gained had gained nearly 650 councillors by yesterday evening, and the Greens, who added more than 180, one message was surely that many voters are turning to parties who want a second referendum.

But the Prime Minister has been resolute in her decision to ignore the closeness of the EU referendum three years ago, along with the support for staying in the single market and customs union, and instead press ahead with a form of Brexit that Remainers find too hard to swallow, but which is still too soft for the most ardent Brexiteers.

If May was serious about defeating the SNP’s aim of winning independence, she would recognise that the harder the Brexit, the greater the chance that Scotland will eventually decide to take the plunge out of the UK and into the EU.

But this was a speech by a leader who knows her time is coming to an end.