Sketch: Headmistress Mrs May has lost control over her Tory pupils and her policies

Theresa May is sometimes compared to a headmistress. If so, then today was the day when she went all-swivel eyed and lost control of her pupils in more senses than one. “Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed,” she chanted at them, when it was apparent that either things had changed or hadn’t changed or, rather, no one knew if things had changed or were going to change, before or after the Green Paper comes out.

What was crystal clear was that “something” might well have changed. That “something”, of course, being the cap on what people will have to pay if they need social care when they’re old and forgetful (unlike the Headmistress Mrs May, of course, who always remembers to consult the relevant Whitehall departments and her cabinet colleagues when announcing epochal policy announcements. Obviously the ministers at Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions were intimately involved in this textbook process?).

Anyway, there is a “something” being argued over here, not a nothing, and quite a big one, which is how much of your wealth will be taken by the biggest death duties ever planned by any government in British history. No less. It would have been better if Ms May have yelled at the press: “Something has changed. Something has changed.” But, not quite able to say what that “something” actually is would have sounded a bit demented, wouldn't’t it?

The problem Ms May faced was a familiar one to the professional politician. On the one hand, she needed to maintain that facade of steely determination with the right tone of voice, the stern expression, the slightly haughty demeanour and her full-on power gear: A red jacket, I notice – a colour I’m told is associated with aggression – plus what looked to be the kind of choke chain you’d see round the neck of a Bullmastiff. On the other, she had to actually make words mean what they do not mean, and of course the usual result of that exercise on an audience (when not practised by a consummate performer like Tony Blair), is confusion turning to contempt turning to ridicule. As Churchill once said about a previously wobbly Tory administration of long ago: “So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” Or “Strong for Weakness” and “Stable in Instability”. (I’m no Churchill, I admit.)

The last time we saw something quite like this was the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu more than quarter century ago. There was the old tyrant of Romania out on the balcony of his vast presidential palace expecting the usual docile reaction from this people, folk he made sure he only fleetingly encountered under the most stage-managed of circumstances, and who he fondly imagined cherished the strong and stable leadership he offered through a tightly-knit group of trusted advisers (the paranoia ran deep there too), and an entire state apparatus at his disposal, including a notoriously quiescent media. Instead, as the Berlin Wall had fallen and communist regimes all around had crumbled, his audience started mocking him. A spell had been broken. Bewildered and, well, a little demented, he and his wife fled by helicopter. They met a gruesome end a short time later.

Happily we’re a democracy, so the worst that can befall Ms May now is a minority government, where the opposition parties would able to make sure she delivers strong and stable rule in the national interest, like stabilisers on a kid’s bike. Right now she looks like she needs all the help she can get. I’m getting on in years and she scares the hell out of me, not because she’s all tough and “tells it like it is” like Maggie Thatcher used to, but because she plainly doesn't know what she’s doing. It’s her that wants putting in a care home – the Sunset Home For Knackered Leaders. And she can pay for it.

Tom Peck is away