What it May or May not mean

At CoffeeHouse, Fraser Nelson is asking what Teresa May's promotion means.

I posted this reply to his question. I've added one or two rudenesses here which I didn't think they would permit, CH being a gentlemanly sort of place. It's not up yet - and it may never be, being a rant and only tangential to Fraser's intent. Update - It's up.

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For a start, it means Dave doesn't get how annoying May is to the average TV viewer. Keep her off the box, Dave. She is a rentagob, patently not a listener but a facile talking machine - and incidentally a destroyer of TV sets because I have to hurl heavy objects in her direction whenever she pops up on QT purporting to represent Tory thinking.

She is a debating disaster. She could not get the ball into an undefended goal if you wheeled her across the line in a bath chair with the ball in her arms.

Far more importantly, it means that Dave does not realise how incredulous many Tory supporters are in seeing, still on the front bench (give me strength), the patronising stupid woman who inflicted all but lethal damage on the party when she gratuitously branded us 'The Nasty Party' on prime time TV (FFS - Y?) to the eternal gratitude of Blair, Brown, Leninspart, Toynbee, the entire Labour Party and the BBC.

With that one phrase, May did more than anyone else, inside or outside the entire political class, to keep the Conservative Party out of government after 1997.

Imagine Pepsi changing its name to Horsepiss. Would you buy or sell Coca-Cola shares? And would the Pepsi bosses promote or fire the genius who suggested such a 'bold' move, in a televised plenary session of the Beverage Industry Annual Convention with Coke's marketing boys and the entire editorial team of PR Week grinning up at her from the front rows? Hello, Dave? I thought you were a PR man, FFS?

Until Cameron’s absolutely Herculean effort to erase memory of it (partially... it's by no means over yet) that phrase of May’s has rung out over the years every time a Tory has opened his or her mouth in public. It has coloured both policy development and every statement from the party since it clanged to the floor of the conference centre.

Not because she was right. She was not, but such a priceless gift to the chattering classes could only become common coin. It was a brand both in marketing terms and in the sense that the label is burned on the forehead of every conservative politician facing a camera or an interviewer.

‘Nasty Party’ became the background to everything the Party has done and will do for a couple of generations. Gee, thanks, Teresa. Good job! Here – have a pay rise. WHAT?

May's two major achievements are to hand Labour another election victory and Brown the keys of Number Ten. (Yes, I know Number Ten does not have keys…)

Mrs May has never apologised to the party nor even acknowledged making the political error of the decade era and she never will because she does not get it. She is always right.

May is a vote loser who should be fired pour encourage les autres, not promoted.

In an earlier age, I would have been demanding her head on a spike.