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British Prime Minister Theresa May gave a speech today that was supposed to do something crucial. She needed to assert her control over the country’s ruling Conservative Party as it figures out how the U.K. will exit the European Union. But instead of asserting her authority, May became the victim of a prank. And then she fought to speak through coughing fits that seemed to underscore her political vulnerability. NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports from Manchester.
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FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: The stakes for May at the Conservative Party’s annual meeting were big. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has been upstaging her by publicly challenging her position on Brexit. She’s been trying to soldier on after leading her party to an electoral debacle in June which early on in yesterday’s speech she apologized for.
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PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY: I’m take responsibility. I led the campaign. And I am sorry.
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LANGFITT: Soon afterwards, a prankster approached the stage and handed May a P45, the British equivalent of a pink slip. He said it was from Boris Johnson, who it’s widely thought wants to replace her. May laughed it off but then fell into a series of coughing fits.
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MAY: We will oversee the biggest expansion in training for doctors and nurses. And we (coughing) – and we…
LANGFITT: She drank glass after glass of water. Philip Hammond, the U.K.’s treasury secretary, stepped up from the audience and handed her a throat lozenge. But the United Kingdom’s prime minister couldn’t shake it.
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MAY: So – while – while we will – excuse me – we will never hesitate to act where businesses aren’t operating as they should.
LANGFITT: Toward the end, letters from the party’s slogan, building a country that works for everyone, fell off the wall behind her. The scene might have seemed comic had it not been so excruciating to watch. Quote, “Theresa May’s conference speech was such an epic disaster. Her message literally fell apart before our eyes,” read a headline in The Mirror, the British tabloid. Many who attended expressed sympathy for May, who fought her way to the end of the speech.
JAMES CLEVERLY: Your heart goes out to her. You know, you’re willing her to succeed.
LANGFITT: James Cleverly is a conservative member of Parliament.
CLEVERLY: You could feel it. It was almost palpable in the room – the whole party saying, come on, girl; you can do this. And she did. She fought through, and she made it happen.
LANGFITT: Many outside, though, saw the speech as a metaphor for a prime minister who’s never recovered from an election she called that lost her party its majority in Parliament. One Twitter user posted a GIF of a Formula One racecar crashing after its front wheels simultaneously popped off. Anthony Seymour, a party member from London who attended the speech, saw it as a lost opportunity.
ANTHONY SEYMOUR: She didn’t really recover, which is a shame because what she said was very, very important. And she had quite a few good things to say.
LANGFITT: In fact, May talked about big issues facing British society, including a renewed debate over capitalism and socialism that the party thought it had won during the 1980s under then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Now the Tories face a resurgent Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed socialist.
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MAY: And we must come together to fight for this mainstream conservative agenda to win the battle of ideas in a new generation all over again, for those ideas are being tested. And at stake are the very things we value.
LANGFITT: It’s unlikely, though, that May’s speech will be remembered today for its ideas and more likely for her painful struggle to deliver them. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Manchester.
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Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations, at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014. On Wednesday, Murphy said he would retire at the end of his current term. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, an opponent of abortion, will not be seeking reelection at the end of his current term, ending speculation about his future a day after a news report claimed the married Republican had asked a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair to get an abortion.
“After discussions with my family and staff, I have come to the decision that I will not seek reelection to Congress at the end of my current term,” Murphy, 65, said in a statement.
“I plan to spend my remaining months in office continuing my work as the national leader on mental health care reform, as well as issues affecting working families in southwestern Pennsylvania,” he added.
[A tale of two Puerto Ricos: What Trump saw — and what he didn’t]
Murphy first publicly admitted in early September to having an affair with Shannon Edwards, a woman half his age, a revelation that dealt a blow to his reelection prospects in 2018. Murphy was first elected to the House in November 2002 and is currently serving his eighth term.
In a Jan. 25 text message obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Edwards said Murphy had “zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options.”
According to the paper, a text response from Murphy’s cellphone number that same day said that his staff were responsible for the antiabortion messages: “I’ve never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don’t write any more. I will.”
Murphy was a co-sponsor of a Republican bill approved Tuesday that bans most abortions after 20 weeks of fetal development.
Murphy is a clinical psychologist who helped write a major overhaul of mental-health programs that passed through Congress last year. He has pushed for improvements in mental-health-care policy since the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Connecticut in December 2012, and his Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act was signed into law by former president Barack Obama as part of a larger health-care reform package.
Murphy is a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and currently chairs its oversight and investigations subcommittee. He is also a member of the House Pro-Life Caucus.
“While I am extremely disappointed in the circumstances surrounding Congressman Murphy’s retirement, I remain confident that PA-18 will remain under Republican control next year,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers said in a statement Wednesday.
Murphy represents a district in southwest Pittsburgh that is solidly Republican. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates it as having an 11-point Republican lean. The district voted for Trump by 19 points over Hillary Clinton, 58-39, in the 2016 presidential election.
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