Theresa May can nail Brexit, she just needs to make sure everyone continues feeling sorry for her

One of May’s supporters suggested that since she overcame such horrors, this proves she’s the ideal person to deal with Brexit. He has a point, because during the negotiations, if she manages to complete a sentence with only six or seven pauses for a Lemsip, the Germans will say 'Aren't you clever' and scrap the demand for £50bn

I think I’ve worked out what’s happening here. It’s a mass psychological test – we’re all being monitored to see at what point we feel sorry for Theresa May.

By November, she’ll be at a G8 summit crawling round the floor looking for her contact lens and get tangled in the Japanese Prime Minister’s wife’s kimono, which she’s allergic to so she turns purple, but the blotches on her neck will spell “I’m shit at Brexit” then she’ll get trodden on by a stray llama, and let out a series of growls that accidentally sound like “You can have Scotland for a fiver” in German to Angela Merkel.

Eventually she’ll be so disastrous the Unite union sends her a bunch of roses with a message “Stay strong, honey”, and Isis will issue a statement wishing her all the best as they’ve never seen someone in such a pickle.

Then it will be revealed this was all an experiment, and we’ve all been given a mark according to when we finally snapped and said, “Please, it’s too embarrassing, make it stop.”

This is why the most touching part of the Conservative conference was the attempt by MPs to be positive about their leader’s speech. “She was resilient for battling through to the end,” they said, which would be a fair statement if she’d had to fight a leopard.

If a five-year-old manages to recite the alphabet even though they lose control a bit and make a puddle between ‘D’ and ‘L’, we tell them they’ve done very well to get to the end, so why should our standards be any different for a prime minister?

Maybe this will inspire a new Indiana Jones film, in which he can only reach the sacred papers if he completes even more terrifying ordeals than before, such as talking through a sniff and not running away when he’s unexpectedly handed a sheet of paper.

One of May’s supporters suggested that since she overcame such horrors, this proves she’s the ideal person to deal with Brexit. He has a point, because during the negotiations, if she manages to complete a sentence with only six or seven pauses for a Lemsip, the Germans will say “aren't you clever” and scrap the demand for £50bn.

Because you would have to be heartless not to sympathise. All round the country, the most vulnerable people were willing her on. The 550,000 who relied on food banks in the last year were urging: “Keep going Theresa – get through the cough so you can explain how we need you in charge otherwise the economy might go wrong.”

And it was Theresa May who, as Home Secretary, sent those vans round the streets with signs saying “If you’re here illegally, go home.” Many of those people will have been cheering her on, as they have so much in common. They had to bravely battle on as they floated across the Mediterranean on a Monopoly board, and the Prime Minister had to summon up a similar courage to finish talking with a bit of a cold, proving we’re all in it together.

She even managed to apologise for her election campaign, saying it was “too scripted”, and at that exact moment proved she’d learned from that mistake, because an intruder handed her a P45, and completely spontaneously she responded by placing it on the floor and carrying on with her scripted speech about how she’d been too scripted.

It was a perfectly written sketch, and if they’d had a bigger budget, she would have said: “No longer must we in our party stick rigidly to our script, even if a zebra walks in front of us”, while ignoring a zebra as it walked in front of her.

Indeed it shows how inclusive the Tories are, that in order to lurk near the front of the Conservative conference during the leader’s speech and not be spotted as unusual, the joker had to dress as the most geeky suburban middle-aged sales director from the 1950s, who would be immediately arrested if he was seen in a public park within 100 yards of a playground.

And it’s a measure of how kindness is at the heart of Conservative thinking that so many Tories expressed their concern for her sniffle. But they may be underestimating her problem. Because it’s extremely rare for a normal cough to ruin a public performance. Anyone who performs regularly knows all manner of illnesses subside during the moments in front of an audience, as adrenaline and vanity get you through.

But it did for her, because she wasn’t excited: she was anxious and forlorn. So when she goes to the doctor, if they’re any good they’ll say, “Ah, Ms May, I think I know the problem. It seems there was a crash in the world economy caused by the recklessness of the banks, and yet those who caused it continued gorging themselves, while millions around the West felt their living standards decline. They became bitter and mistrustful of the values that have dominated the recent past, in which the only way of running society has been to hand it over to big business – so from America to Spain, Greece to France, politicians representing those views have lost their popularity, but don’t understand why.

“So you called an election you didn’t need to call, certain to beat someone you saw as unelectable, and don’t have a clue why you came unstuck. Nor does your party – they blame you, so you’re a bag of nerves and can’t manage to read out loud without collapsing in a heap. So have a Nurofen and try and get some rest.”