BIRMINGHAM, England — The U.K. has “everything we need to succeed” after Brexit, Theresa May will tell Conservative party members Wednesday, insisting that despite the challenge of reaching a deal with the EU, the country’s “best days lie ahead.”
In her speech to close the party’s annual gathering in Birmingham, May will offer these and other platitudes, adding that the U.K.’s “future is full of promise” and that many countries around the world are waiting to do trade deals with it, according to extracts from her speech released overnight.
“Don’t let anyone tell you we don’t have what it takes,” May is expected to say. “We have everything we need to succeed.”
The prime minister’s speech, which echoes a previous promise, will be the final act of a conference which has seen her so-called Chequers proposals for the U.K.’s future relationship with the EU fiercely attacked by Brexiteer MPs, most prominently by former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who hosted a rival speech Tuesday, which attracted a capacity audience of 1,500.
However, no serious challenge to May’s personal authority has emerged over the course of the four-day event, with even her rival Johnson encouraging supporters to get behind the prime minister and urge her to return to her original, harder-line Brexit plan of last year.
May will also use the speech to attempt to strike a balance between different factions in the party that have spent the week debating how to counter the threat of Labour under left-wing Leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Conservatives, May will say, should be “a party that believes in the good that government can do but knows that government will never have all the answers.”
Playing on Labour’s slogan of “for the many, not the few,” she will add that the Tories should be: “A party not for the few, not even for the many, but for everyone who is willing to work hard and do their best.”