Theresa May celebrates first party conference speech as PM by telling off MP who said he’d like to snog her for not getting round to it
She picked out James Cleverly for not making good on his pledge during a game of 'snog, marry, avoid'
THERESA May celebrated giving her first party conference speech as PM by telling off an MP who said he’d like to snog her for not getting round to it yet.
At a drinks reception in Birmingham last night she pointed out James Cleverly as she was speaking and joked: “I still haven’t had that kiss!”
It comes after the Braintree MP hit the headlines last year after playing a game of ‘snog, marry, avoid’ on a radio show.
He was asked by John Pienaar on Radio 5Live about pop star Rita Ora, to which the married 47-year-old said ‘snog’.
But there were raised eyebrows when he gave the same answer about the then-Home Secretary.
Elsewhere in the interview he said he would ‘marry’ Labour’s former Cabinet minister Yvette Cooper, and admitted to smoking cannabis during his younger days.
Asked whether he inhaled, he replied: “Of course, that's the point, to paraphrase Obama.”
But his loose comments came back to bite Mr Cleverly when Mrs May, now the Prime Minister, brought it up at the event last night.
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She was speaking after delivering her maiden speech to the Conservative party faithful, where she outlined more plans for Brexit.
But the 60-year-old was in a more jovial mood at the fringe event, saying: “There are quite a few journalists here in the room.
“They have been asking me what Brexit means. It means we are leaving the EU.”
She also laid down the gauntlet to the EU by naming full control over immigration as Britain’s Brexit red line.
And in a tub-thumping speech to Tories, she then dared the other 27 leaders to throw up self-defeating trade barriers against us.
Delivered while fittingly wearing steel-capped shoes, Mrs May’s bold declaration tees up a titanic two year-long game of brinkmanship with the EU.