On 3 October 2018, prime minister Theresa May boogied onto the Conservative conference stage in Birmingham to the sound of ABBA’s Dancing Queen. The self-deprecating and unusually light-hearted shimmy was a reference to her recent visit to South Africa, where footage of May dancing with schoolchildren had gone viral.

May’s 2017 conference season in Manchester was universally regarded as a political and presentational disaster. The prime minister’s keynote speech was muffled by a debilitating coughing fit, and interrupted by a comedian who handed her a forged P45. The prankster claimed – falsely – that his actions were authorised by foreign secretary Boris Johnson.

And then, May’s conference backdrop began to fall apart. She had been speaking in front of a Tory-blue background bearing the slogan: Building a Country that Works for Everyone. As she approached the end of her address, the “f” in “for” fell to the floor.

The media could not help characterise the speech as a metaphor for her disintegrating political authority. It came only months after the 2017 general election campaign, which resulted in a hung parliament.

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The prime minister returned to Conservative conference in 2018, however, with a literal spring in her step.

May’s ‘Dancing Queen’ entrance drew laughter and a roaring response from the hall. The Swedish ambassador to the UK, Torbjörn Sohlström, congratulated May on her choice of song, posting to X (now Twitter): “I can only say Bravo to Theresa May for starting her conference speech with ABBA’s Dancing Queen.”

The raucous response in Birmingham suggested that Conservative activists had not entirely abandoned their leader, despite ambitious pretenders – not least of all Johnson – waiting in the wings. In the preceding days, Johnson had told a conference fringe event that it was time to “chuck Chequers” (May’s Brexit strategy).

In her opening remarks, May stated: “You’ll have to excuse me if I cough during this speech. I’ve been up all night supergluing the backdrop.”

She added: “There are some things about last year’s conference I have tried to forget. But I will always remember the warmth I felt from everyone in the hall. You supported me all the way – thank you.”

The speech that followed was relaxed, confident and often humorous – qualities rarely associated with May’s ill-fated premiership.

She referred to a faux pas committed by her former foreign secretary earlier that year. In June 2018, Johnson declined to deny reports he had used an expletive when responding to business leaders’ concerns about Brexit.

Speaking from the conference stage, May remarked that business leaders might have heard a “four-letter word” describing what Conservatives want to do to them with Brexit.

She said: “It has a single syllable. It is of Anglo-Saxon derivation. It ends in the letter ‘K’.

“Back business.”

Referring to Johnson’s performances on the conference fringe, she said: “It is no surprise that we have had a range of different views expressed this week. But my job as prime minister is to do what I believe to be in the national interest…

“Leadership is doing what you believe to be right, and having the courage and determination to see it through, and that’s what I’ve been doing on Brexit.”

Turning to policy, May declared an end to austerity.

She told delegates: “When we’ve secured a good Brexit deal for Britain, at the spending review next year we will set out our approach for the future. A decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off.

“There must be no return to the uncontrolled borrowing of the past. No undoing all the progress of the last eight years. No taking Britain back to square one. But the British people need to know that the end is in sight. And our message to them must be this: we get it.”

May also launched a series of blistering attacks on the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn. She rued the state of British politics, saying that “Conservatives will always stand up for a politics that unites us rather than divides us.”

She added: “That used to be Labour’s position too. But when I look at its leadership today, I worry it’s no longer the case. We all remember what the Labour Party used to be. We passionately disagreed with many of their policies… But at least they had some basic qualities that everyone could respect.

“They were proud of our institutions. They were proud of our armed forces. They were proud of Britain. Today, when I look across at the opposition benches, I can still see that Labour Party. The heirs of Hugh Gaitskell and Barbara Castle, Dennis Healy and John Smith.

“But not on the front bench. Instead their faces stare blankly out from the rows behind, while another party occupies prime position: the Jeremy Corbyn party.

“The Jeremy Corbyn party rejects the common values that once bridged our political divide.”

She added: “Would Neil Kinnock, who stood-up to the hard-left, have stood by while his own MPs faced deselection, and needed police protection at their Party conference?

“Would Jim Callaghan, who served in the Royal Navy, have asked the Russian government to confirm the findings of our own intelligence agencies? Would Clement Attlee, Churchill’s trusted deputy during the Second World War, have told British Jews they didn’t know the meaning of antisemitism?”

After May’s conference calamity in 2017, the address was seen as a successful political set piece.

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Nevertheless, the conference speech did little to resolve the underlying realities that would eventually ensure May’s downfall: her minority government and the Conservative Party’s intractable Brexit divisions.

After all, May’s 2018 conference speech would be her last as prime minister and Conservative leader.

On 15 January 2019, May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement suffered a catastrophic defeat in the House of Commons – the first of three ill-fated “meaningful votes”. The government’s motion was rejected by 432 votes to 202 (a majority of 230).

Theresa May’s Brexit deal defeated in historic commons vote

This marked the largest defeat for a sitting government in modern parliamentary history.

May resigned as prime minister, belatedly accepting her P45, on 24 May 2019 – shortly before the results of the recent European parliament election were announced.

Johnson, unsurprisingly, emerged as the main beneficiary of May’s downfall.

Theresa May announces resignation, admitting failure to deliver Brexit