Theresa May faces roadblocks en route to Birmingham

Theresa May was handed a cough sweet at the 2017 Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham

"It'll be good when it's finished"

That's always been the standing joke about Birmingham.

But these days, there's many a true word.... No-one would argue it will be a very good thing indeed when we see an end to the grinding disruption caused by one of the biggest building sites in Europe.

There is a double meaning here. Will this gigantic project culminate in a city centre showpiece that really is genuinely "good when it's finished"?

There will be no avoiding the question when about 11,000 people converge on the city for next week's Conservative Party Conference.

Looming high over the convention centre are the giant cranes constructing the project entitled, with not a trace of irony, Paradise.

It's more hellish than heavenly for anyone enduring the traffic jams, cones and road closures surrounding the site.

And there could be no more appropriate metaphor for how little room for manoeuvre Theresa May has as she struggles to steer a course to keep her show on the road.

Bumpy ride from Birmingham to Brexit

Ralph Speth, Jaguar Land Rover chief executive, has warned a hard Brexit would wipe out more than £1bn a year of profits

A party conference less than six months before Britain leaves the EU was always bound to be a bumpy ride.

But the events of recent days leave Mrs May just as tightly boxed in as Birmingham's long-suffering drivers.

The rebuff to her Chequers plan in Salzburg has, on her own admission, increased the chances of a no-deal Brexit.

In a region where more than 50,000 people work in car making, no deal would cost tens of thousands of those jobs, according to the Chief Executive of Jaguar Land Rover, Dr Ralf Speth.

He also warns a "hard Brexit" would wipe out the £1.2bn a year profits he needs to invest in the next generation of low and zero-emission vehicles.

These are essential if Mrs May's prescription for "zero emissions mobility", which she set out in the self-same Birmingham conference centre three weeks ago, is to be realised over the next 30 years.

Yes, all roads lead to Birmingham: Dr Speth made his speech there as well.

If she hopes to give him what he wants, frictionless access to European markets and just-in-time delivery of goods and components, while also equipping the UK to sign trade deals around the world, she would inevitably be thwarted yet again by further accusations of cherry picking.

Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson is set to address about 1,000 Tory activists at their party conference

But her Common Rule Book to enable Dr Speth's car parts to be moved across the EU is derided by Brexiteers as "the Euro Rule Book".

Maybe they feel she has already listened too much to business leaders like Dr Speth.

And then there are the voters themselves.

Many thousands of them, especially in the Black Country and Stoke, supported Leave and switched from Labour to the Conservatives in Stoke South and Walsall North in last year's general election.

How can Mrs May make the compromises she needs in pursuit of a Brexit deal without appearing in places like these to be backtracking on Brexit?

On the other hand, the Conservatives lost Warwick and Leamington to Labour and had their majority squeezed in Worcester, apparently on the strength of Remain sentiment in these and other areas which have long been considered safer Tory territory.

And all this while holding together a party whose rival factions are breathing fire.

We hear Boris Johnson will make another of his rock star entrances into Birmingham to address about 1,000 activists on the eve of Mrs May's conference speech.

The question mark will hang over Mrs May's leadership whatever happens in Birmingham.

No parking

Part of the main slogan fell off as the prime minister spoke last year

Brexitologists among you will say there are infinitely more complications which narrow the road for her and ensure every time she steers one way she is open to an equal and opposite reaction.

There is just nowhere to park the awkward questions which previous leaders have so often contrived to avoid.

And it's not just the back-seat drivers in her party she needs to worry about.

Other traffic hazards can come unexpectedly, from the Left.

After a summer in which the damaging row over anti-Semitism has dogged the Labour Party in general and Jeremy Corbyn in particular, his party's Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, Brigid Jones, conceded to me during last weekend's Sunday Politics Midlands it had not been Labour's finest hour: An example of English irony perhaps?

But she went on to tell me the Conservatives needed to confront a no less serious challenge in their own ranks: Islamophobia.

I was contacted after our programme by viewers suggesting I should ask Theresa May about this.

And ask her I will, when I join her in Number Ten during the run-up to this first party conference since last year's car crash in Manchester: falling stage logos, coughing fits and all.

I hear, incidentally, to avoid any embarrassing repeats this time, all the words and logos displayed on the set will be projected on rather than stuck.

But there's no legislating against the perennial curse known to politicians, activists and journalists alike as the conference cold.

Exit lane

To find out how she answers this and other questions, you'll have to join me for this weekend's Sunday Politics Midlands at 11.00 BST on BBC One Midlands and, this week, across the UK on BBC One HD.

Joining me in the studio will be Education Minister and Conservative MP for Stratford-on-Avon Nadhim Zahawi and former shadow Treasury chief secretary and Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood Shabana Mahmood.

And by the way, if proud Brummies among you are about to berate me on Twitter and elsewhere for those comments about the Paradise development and the traffic logjam in the city where the concrete never sets, relax.

Bring it on, I say. A city devoid of cranes and building sites is a city without a future.

I just hope it'll be good when it's finished.