Theresa May’s attempt to convince the public she was still in charge of the country, Brexit and her own party saw her partake in a live phone-in on LBC on Friday morning.
The prime minister was told to stand down, that Jacob Rees-Mogg would be better at her job and was even compared to famed Second World War appeaser, Neville Chamberlain.
But it was a claim about a speech she made as home secretary in 2015 that raised the most eyebrows.
During a segment on the impact of financial cuts on police, in which May said the Tories were “actually putting more resources into the police”, host Nick Ferrari asked: “Weren’t you the home secretary who said they were crying wolf?”
The PM replied: “I’m not sure I used exactly that phrase Nick.”
But a video of that very speech to the Police Federation in 2015 shows she did indeed use those words.
May had accused leaders of the group of “scaremongering” over the effects of cuts, adding: “So please – for your sake and for the thousands of police officers who work so hard every day – this crying wolf has to stop.”
The claim was seized upon by Labour’s Diane Abbot who described it as “unfortunate”.
The rest of the call-in was just as tumultuous – John, from Gillingham, compared May to Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister who famously claimed to have secured “peace for our time” in negotiations with Hitler, only for the Second World War to break out the following year.
“Do you consider yourself the modern-day Chamberlain, who also went to Europe and negotiated with a foreign power and came back having appeased that foreign power and not stood up for our country?” John asked the PM.
“I would like you to stand up for our country and stand up for what’s best for our country. Appeasing a foreign power and locking us in forever is not doing that.”
May replied: “No I don’t, and the reason is this: We are not going to be locked in forever to something that we don’t want.”