What Theresa May needs right now is a huge dose of arrogance

Privately, some former Cameron frontbenchers turned mischief-makers admit that they have no interest in going against the Government on any major upcoming votes

Frozen by fear, the Government is unable to establish a clear direction of travel (PA)

The universal credit hotline was going to cost up to 55p a minute until it didn’t; the housing benefits of supported housing tenants was going to be capped in line with the private rented sector until it wasn’t; free school lunches were going to be scrapped until they weren’t.

There was a point somewhere in the distant past – probably around 2015 – when a government or opposition making a U-turn on flagship policy seemed significant, but in May’s new world, any announcement feels like it should come with a caveat of “actually, who knows what this will look like in two days’ time”.

The phrase “in office but not in power” has been used repeatedly to describe the Government’s current predicament, but a more topical comparison would be Chidi Anagonye.

Chidi is an ethics professor gone to heaven in clever comedy The Good Place, and spends most of the first season being charmingly indecisive about every aspect of his existence in the afterlife.

The plot twist then drops, and viewers find out that Chidi and his new friends were actually in the bad place all along; a version of hell disguised to look pleasant at first then gradually deteriorating.

Why was lovely, earnest Chidi sent to the bad place? A flashback to his time on earth reveals that his indecisiveness was in fact a burden to everyone around him, and his inability to make any kind of decision consistently ruined everything for everyone, and ultimately led to his early death.

Though the chances of Theresa May being hit by a falling air con unit outside Downing Street remain slim, her prospects remain roughly as promising as the ethics professor’s.

Frozen by fear, the Government is unable to establish a clear direction of travel: the party is still polling at decent levels, especially after seven choppy years in power, but they are acutely aware that any misdirected move could mean a sudden death.

This was one of the main themes of this month’s Conservative conference: while the fringes were bubbling with ideas from all wings of the party, the main hall was mostly empty, and home only to ministers blandly delivering empty speeches.

A few policies have been announced since, but most went through the embarrassing panto stages of “We’re doing this!” / “No you’re not!” / “Yes we are!” / “No you’re not!” / “No we’re not!”, which won’t strike anyone as a sustainable approach to policy-making.

Theresa May’s strength when she ran for Conservative leader in the summer of 2016 was her lack of ferocious commitment to any particular ideology, which easily transformed her into the unity candidate.

This has now turned into her main weakness, as at least a prime minister with a stiff intellectual backbone can always retreat to their ideological hinterland, and hope that the voters will follow them.

Left without an obvious rulebook or a solid majority, May now risks slowly sleepwalking into electoral oblivion, but a little cockiness could go a long way.

For a start, her MPs are terrified by the idea of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, which most now see as a very real possibility.

Privately, some former Cameron frontbenchers turned mischief-makers admit that while they can be partial to some muscle flexing in the media, they have no interest in going against the Government on any major upcoming votes.

Similarly, most MPs with leadership ambitions from the 2010 and 2015 intakes know that they couldn’t grab hold of the party any time soon, so will back the Prime Minister for their own sake, at least for now.

Theresa May once boasted about being called a “bloody difficult woman” – now might be a good time for her to revive that moniker.