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Theresa May is still stuck in the denial stage of grief – the sooner she accepts her failure, the better

As she scuttles from airport to airport like a stateless refugee on the run, it feels like the right moment to shift the futile speculation about Theresa May away from the political and towards the psychological.

As a political entity, after all, she barely exists. That is an unusual observation to make about a serving PM. Generally, national leaders have some relevance even in their death throes. But for the several weeks before his demise was finally announced, Marshall Tito’s cadaver was an infinitely more effective political presence than May appears to be today.

When she pulled the vote on her Brexit withdrawal agreement on Monday, she tacitly declared that she has no power, no authority, no influence, no clue what she is doing, and no idea where she is heading.

So what is going on in her head while – in her animatronic way – she continues to function precisely as always?

Her ability to parrot gibberish in a tone hinting to the casual listener that it makes sense is unimpaired. She can calmly repeat that, because we had a people’s vote before, the will of the people must be ignored ever after. She can do it with the coiled impatience of a teacher steering the remedial maths class through an algebra equation of blinding simplicity for the 27th time, in the faith that finally there’ll be a chorus of eurekas even from the dolts passing notes to each other at the back.

Whatever one might have indulgently thought before, this isn’t defiance, or stoicism, or resilience under intolerable stress. It isn’t tenacity, or courage, or heroism under fire. It isn’t self-sacrificial obedience to a sense of duty. And it certainly isn’t normal.

This is a contender for the longest and most potentially lethal case of clinical self-delusion in geopolitical history since Hitler declined to accept the inevitable.

Somehow, more than 18 months after that general election gave her the worst possible news, she is immovably stuck in the terminal patient’s first stage of grief. Somehow, she is still in denial.

The five point theory states that she should have moved to anger long ago. Perhaps it spills out in private, and she yells at the Arthur Askey husband when he forgets the ice cube in her scotch, or gets an easy question wrong on The Chase. In public, beyond some rolling of the eyes when asked an impertinent question on Monday, she maintains a facade of chilling serenity.

After anger comes depression, yet she is terrifyingly cheerful. As for the bargaining, given the results of her efforts domestically and in Europe, she can be excused for skipping over that stage.

But even if she were capable, there’s no time left for running through the gears. The country needs her to move directly from the first to the last stage. It needs her acceptance, and it needs it now.

It isn’t so much that she has confirmed her inadequacy time and time and again – though she has, or that there is a soul on the benches beside or behind her in whom anyone on Christmas card terms with their right mind could have a slither of confidence – though there isn’t.

It is all about the clock – or rather the two clocks. One is ticking remorselessly down to leaving day in March, and the apparently vanished chance of the no deal cataclysm her deranged intransigence is reviving. The other is counting down to an implosion of trust in the political system on a scale unseen and unimagined before.

After trading for so long on her capacity for self-sacrifice, she is actively contemplating burning the country for her own survival.

The danger to what residual faith in the system survives doesn’t stem from that. We expect political leaders to be monomaniacal, and are pleasantly surprised if not.

It comes from the persistent failure of the system to finish her off. By defying the laws of politics to keep her in place – through a hideous cabal of cowardice, panic, self-interest and paralysis – her cabinet, her party and the Commons are colluding with her in a mass collective act of vandalism. It is this, not the admittedly eccentric notion of asking the people to express their will again, that is nudging the notion of democracy towards the precipice.

God alone knows what she turns to these days for inspiration, but if it’s old footage of her hero stultifyingly clinging to the crease, I’d recommend she gives the Geoffrey Boycott DVD a rest and watches a war film instead. The Guns of Navarone would be the choice, and specifically the scene in which a gangrene-riddled soldier skips out stages 1-4, lands directly on 5, and tells his compadres that their only chance is to leave him behind.

Failing that, she might try The Terminal. One day, that will double up as the title of the May biopic. But the one I have in mind is the Spielberg movie about a stateless refugee from a chaotic country who, however unwillingly, finds some kind of solace from living in an airport.