Amber Rudd has been caught angrily demanding that Boris Johnson gets out of his seat to take part in a standing ovation for his rival Theresa May.
The Home Secretary was seen ordering Boris to get on his feet and clap after May’s disastrous conference speech.
It comes amid calls from senior Tories for Mr Johnson to be sacked from his role as Foreign Secretary amid accusations that he wants the top role for himself.
In the footage, ministers and activists are seen getting out of their seats to express sympathy with throaty Mrs May as she struggled to deliver her speech.
The Home Secretary was seen ordering Boris to get on his feet and clap after May’s disastrous conference speech
The Home Secretary tugged his shirt sleeve and cajoled him up after the Foreign Secretary lingered in his seat, before eventually standing and clapping.
Asked about the incident later, Mrs Rudd grinned and said: ‘Boris will always do the right thing.’
Mrs May suffered a nightmare today as her bid to mount a fightback with policies on housing and energy was derailed by a prankster, a sore throat, and set malfunctions.
She endured an agonising 65 minutes on stage in Manchester as she coughed and spluttered through an address that had been intended to relaunch her premiership.
To the horror of Cabinet ministers, the situation took another dramatic turn for the worse when a notorious prankster approached the podium and hand her a fake P45.
And to cap off the misery letters then began falling off the Conservative slogan positioned in full view of TV cameras behind Mrs May.
It comes amid calls from senior Tories for Mr Johnson to be sacked from his role as Foreign Secretary amid accusations that he wants the top role for himself
Comedian Simon Brodkin managed to get through security at the Manchester venue and hand Mrs May the P45
Despite the P45 prank making him centre of attention, Boris was supportive of the PM in the tweet he post after her speech
The meltdown will fuel speculation about accident-prone Mrs May’s future as leader, which has been raging all week.
By contrast Boris Johnson, who has been accused of manoeuvring to take over the top job, was seen as having delivered a barnstorming speech to the Tory faithful yesterday.
Bookmakers quickly slashed the odds on Mrs May being replaced within a year.
Ironically given her throat issues, one of Mrs May’s key phrases was that she wanted to become a ‘voice for the voiceless’.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said after Mrs May’s stumbling performance this afternoon that it would become ‘one of the more famous coughs in history’.
The Conservative cabinet looks on as Mrs May gives a speech that was supposed to resurrect her political career