THERESA May has been accused of trying to "con" voters after she used her conference to speech to claim that austerity was over.

The Prime Minister went on the attack in her address to the Tory party faithful on Wednesday morning, with digs at Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon.

The Prime Minister was under pressure as she addressed the party faithful in Birmingham. Half an hour before she was due to start, former Tory minister James Duddridge had added his name to calls for a leadership contest.

No doubt haunting the Tory chief were the memories of last year’s conference speech when she was handed her by p45 by a comedy-protester, struck down with a coughing fit, and forced to stand helplessly by as letters plastered to the wall behind her fell to the ground.

READ MORE: Tory members turn out for Boris Johnson's speech over panel discussion focused on the Union

But the Tory chief managed to stun the crowd by awkwardly dancing on to the stage in Birmingham's International Conference Centre to Abba’s Dancing Queen, in a reference to her much mocked hoofing during a visit to Kenya in the summer.

The National:

Yesterday, Johnson had drawn a crowd of 1500 to a “chuck Chequers” rally, where he said the Prime Minister’s proposal for a post Brexit relationship with the EU was a “betrayal”.

May didn't mention her former foreign secretary by name, but hit back by saying: “Leadership is doing what you believe to be right, and having the courage and determination to see it through, and that’s what I’ve been doing on Brexit.”

She also urged the party faithful to come together, warning that the infighting could mean "no Brexit at all".

"If we stick together and hold our nerve, I know we can get a deal that delivers for Britain," she said.

On austerity, May told the party faithful to go and tell voters that austerity would soon be over.

"And our message to them must be this – we get it. We are not just a party to clean up a mess, we are the party to steer a course to a better future."

To applause from activists, she said: "Sound finances are essential, but they are not the limit of our ambition.

"Because you made sacrifices, there are better days ahead.

"So when we've secured a good Brexit deal for Britain, at the spending review next year we will set out our approach for the future.

"Debt as a share of the economy will continue to go down, support for public services will go up.

The National:

"Because, a decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off."

In a direct address to Sturgeon, May attacked her for wanting to remain in Europe and remain part of the Common Fisheries Policy.

“You claim to stand up for Scotland, but you want to lock Scottish fishermen into the Common Fisheries Policy forever. That’s not ‘Stronger for Scotland’, it’s a betrayal of Scotland,” she said.

May also seemed to make an audacious bid for Labour supporters left behind by the rise of Corbyn.

She attacked the veteran left-winger while praising his party and his predecessors.

“We all remember what the Labour Party used to be," she said.

READ MORE: Applause for Boris Johnson as he rejects Theresa May's Chequers plan at Tory conference

She added: “Today, when I look across at the opposition benches, I can still see that Labour Party. The heirs of Hugh Gaitskell and Barbara Castle, Dennis Healy and John Smith. But not on the front bench.

“Instead their faces stare blankly out from the rows behind, while another party occupies prime position: the Jeremy Corbyn party.”

“What has befallen Labour,” she added, “is a national tragedy.”

The SNP’s Ian Blackford accused May of having “danced around the key issues".

He said: “There is a massive gulf between her rhetoric and the reality of what is now facing the UK. “If Theresa May genuinely believes that the UK’s best days lie ahead then she is being wilfully blind to that reality.

“We are just months away from a potentially disastrous hard Brexit – or the utter catastrophe of a no-deal outcome.”

He added: “No-one seriously believes the UK’s best days lie ahead under this disastrous, bungling Tory government – and the sooner Mrs May realises that and commits to averting a hard Brexit the better.”

Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Green Party's co-convenor invoked the back catalogue of Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anni-frid to make his point.

The National:

“Theresa May sees herself as a Dancing Queen, but that speech was more of an SOS.

"In what could be the Prime Ministers final party conference speech, there really was no indication that the UK government is any closer to striking a Brexit deal.

“The Tory leader’s insistence that a hard Brexit is a real possibility will no doubt lead many to come to the conclusion that it’s time to stop this mess once and for all.

"Ever more people, from Tory ministers to Labour, Green and Plaid voices, are now agreeing that voters must be given the opportunity to put the brakes on Brexit.”

Labour's John McDonnell took issue with the Prime Minister's claims on austerity.

"May's claim that this is an end to austerity is a complete con. The Tories have promised this before – and it was a con then too," he tweeted.

"The Government has already told us that spending for the next four years will be hit by many more vicious cuts. Nothing, sadly, has changed."