For example, it was not immediately obvious during May's creation of her cabinet what the outgoing Education Secretary Nicki Morgan had done so very badly wrong. She had taken over a complete mess created by the fanatical conviction of Michael Gove that only he cared about children and only a return to the imagined system of his childhood could possibly save them from a life of ignorance foisted on them by teachers who wouldn't follow his simplistic prescriptions about what they might need to learn. Gradually she was sorting out some of that mess. She had even begun to find a way to move on from the nonsense of assuming that uncontrolled and unaccountable academies must always be better at running education than every single elected local authority in the country. She had announced policies that allowed well run local education authorities to take control of schools anywhere in the country and allowed them to compete with academy chains to provide the best service. Not exactly what those who distrust the motives behind the academy programme might want but a lot more sensible and workable than what had gone before.
So she was sacked. At the time I cynically thought that the most likely explanation for this was that Morgan was a competent powerful woman who could think for herself and so was something of a threat to Theresa May. Now it is clear that this may have uncharitable and I was entirely wrong. It is now clear that she was sacked because May wanted someone more fanatically right wing that Gove not someone more moderate and sensible. The new Minister is quickly measuring up to the brief. The first thing she is doing to "improve social mobility" is to bring back secondary modern schools. Apparently the problem with education is that we are not separating off the brightest and the best early enough and leaving the thickest and the worst to stew in their own juices in sink schools. Only a return to a crude and total separation of the classes at the age of 11 will make the country great again.
When it came to Health our moderate and reasonable safe pair of hands Prime Minister had the chance to quietly and conveniently relieve Hunt of his duties. She could have given someone new the brief of calming everything down with the Junior Doctors and then left the NHS to get on with the difficult task they had been set of delivering a better service for an older population with almost no extra money and fewer young immigrants to support them. Instead she ignored that wonderful opportunity to escape from a silly stand-off and firmly told Hunt to stay where he was and continue with his efforts to crush the Junior Doctors and force through another round of "efficiency" savings with renewed vigour. In other words she chose to drive many of our best young health care professionals to move abroad and put our entire health service at risk in order to pursue her own political agenda. Not my idea of a sensible middle of the road moderate.
Then we come to the environment. Sensible safe fracking is coming your way. Apparently the best means of helping China and the US to deliver on the Paris climate change commitments is for the UK to delay as long as possible on signing up whilst we try to bribe local citizens to allow drilling for gas in the vain hope that way to shore up the UK's fragile finances is to make our economy dependant on selling raw materials. Any idea that we might invest in modern low energy technology, or finance a major programme of insulation and energy use reduction, or create a vibrant green energy manufacturing sector got dumped along with the idea that we need a government department focusing on the Environment. May's first move on the environment was to close down its government department and place the rump that remained under the governance of the Department that was pushing most furiously for fracking. This is a complete failure to understand the urgencies of the problems we face or the scale of the opportunities available to any nation that gets at the forefront of solving them. Clearly there is some new definition of sensible and moderate knocking about that I have never encountered before.
And then there is the small issue of Brexit. Perhaps here at last is the territory where her claims to be middle of the road and sensible will stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny?
Well possibly so. Or possible not. I couldn't possibly tell you. Because May's strategy is to say that she cannot tell us anything significant because that might interfere with her negotiating strategy. She is far too sensible to tell any of her actual voters or any of their elected MPs what it is that she is planning to do. We are asked to just trust her and let her get on with implementing her strategy. Whatever that is.
Could it be that she thinks her Brexit Minister is right in saying that we have to leave the single market because it is so important that immigration is controlled? Could it be that her rambling confused contradiction of him means that the priorities are the other way round? No one can say because we aren't entitled to know.
Could be it that she is delaying the triggering of article 50 until early next year so that she hold secret negotiations with the EU to sort out the most difficult issues first? Or is it that she is scared to trigger it because that leaves her with only two years to sort out a total mess? Don't bother asking - she won't tell. All we know is that she doesn't think Parliament will have the right to properly debate the issue as she thinks the referendum has given her the right to do whatever she thinks best.
We know that she likes building high walls in Calais with tax payers money without any clarity about what happens inside those walls or how people are persuaded to move within them. We know that she doesn't think a points system works. But we aren't to be told what the actual system will be or whether people who have lived, worked and paid taxes in the UK are allowed to stay until sometime in the future when she feels inclined to tell us.
I don't know about you but I find that a touch unconvincing. A touch worrying. A touch arrogant. I have that crazy old fashioned idea that the person who runs the country should occasionally tell us a little about what they intend to do. I don't normally give my trust to politicians when they make promises. I prefer to give that trust when I actually see some reasonable policies beginning to be implemented.
Especially when the safe pair of hands that is running the country has already taken decisions that do serious damage to both the National Health system and the chances of 70% of the children in this country receiving a decent education. Perhaps you are crazy enough to share some of my concerns?