That evening May faced the BBC’s most fearsome inquisitor, Andrew Neil, and in a performance that had campaign staff at Tory headquarters watching slack-jawed, continued to deny the obvious. She said the Tories had ‘not rewritten’ the manifesto, because ‘nothing has changed from the principles’. When she insisted that the Conservatives’ ‘credibility is not in doubt’, Neil snapped, ‘Your ability to answer this question may be in doubt.’ Even then Tory high command did not realise the long-term impact of May’s performance. ‘We saw it was a bump in the road, not something that would fatally wound
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