'Three minutes of nothing': Theresa May criticised for wooly interview in Plymouth

Theresa May has been accused of giving one of her worst interviews of the general election campaign to date, after a local newspaper reporter described his exchange with the Prime Minister as ‘three minutes of nothing’.

Sam Blackledge, the chief reporter at the Plymouth Herald, met Mrs May at the city’s fish market yesterday morning.

Following their encounter Mr Blackledge described how she had failed to sufficiently answer any of the questions that he had posed.

When asked if she was getting worried about a Labour resurgence in the polls, she skirted around the question, responding vaguely: ‘I’m very clear that this is a crucial election for this country’.

A similarly evasive response was given when Mr Blackledge asked if her Brexit plan would benefit Plymouth.

‘I think there is a better future ahead for Plymouth and for the whole of the UK’, she replied.

In his account of the meeting, Mr Blackledge also described how the encounter came about.

‘To start with, it was quite an exciting experience. We got the call late on Tuesday night, and the visit was kept totally secret until her arrival.

‘We waited in the drizzle as she chatted with fishermen and nodded earnestly at nets and buckets, leopard print heels click-clacking on the harbour floor,’ he wrote.

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But back at the office, he said his team struggled to make a story from Mrs May’s vagaries.

’Back at the office, we scratched our heads and wondered what the top line was’, he wrote.

‘She had given me absolutely nothing. It was like a postmodern version of Radio 4’s Just A Minute.’

Responding to the interview, left-wing writer Owen Jones claimed that it would make you ‘cringe so hard you’ll end up in another dimension’.

Another critic described the exchange as ‘robotic’ and claimed that the Prime Minister seemed ‘unengaged’.

The ill-fated visit to Plymouth came on the same day that Mrs May refused to appear on a BBC leaders debate – sending Home Secretary Amber Rudd in her place instead just 48 hours after her father’s death.