What is the British Dream? Twitter has some ideas...

Theresa May conservative party conference 2017

(Image credit: Carl Court/AFP/Getty)

published 4 October 2017

Theresa May’s keynote address at the Conservative party conference this afternoon was supposed to reinvigorate the beleaguered PM’s vision for the nation.

But beyond the talk of policies and politics, one phrase in particular stood out - “British Dream”, which cropped up 22 times in the speech. The title of the speech? “Renewing the British Dream”.

If May was hoping that her “British dream” rhetoric would echo the grandiose vision of the American dream, any such ambition was quickly cut down to size with a healthy dose of sarcasm on Twitter as users attempted to work out exactly what this “dream” might be:

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In fact, it turns out that most of us would settle for a pretty modest “dream”:

May’s fondness for repetition is well documented - who can forget the summer of “strong and stable”? - but even by her own standards, the PM outdid herself:

While more than one political commentator pointed out that it wasn’t only the repetition that made the “British Dream” sound familiar:

And, as May returned to the phrase over and over again, some viewers found themselves driven to the point of hysteria: