If you thought Theresa May was tone-deaf and unresponsive during the actual election campaign, then that's nothing on her performance since.

Following her seriously reduced circumstances I initially thought it was right for her to continue in office.  The electoral arithmetic suggested it as the only viable option, at least until the parliamentary circumstances changed.  She could have chosen to take on board the disastrous result that her cavalier election calling produced and govern as a minority leader but with significant consultation with other parties on Brexit.  That her own Brexit stance - which has been irredeemably, if unilluminatingly of the "hard" variety - would need modifying seemed evident too.

Then came the day after.  The prime minister's speech outside Downing Street was one of the most misjudged exercises I have come across.  She made no reference at all to the lamentable election result.  She simply announced she would be forming a new government, and for good measure she replaced the old "strong and stable" with the word "certainty".  I began to wonder if somehow she had been kept isolated from the election results.  It was a performance of astonishing misjudgement and ineptitude.  Compare it with David Cameron's eloquent and moving "mea culpa" after the referendum.  So utterly disconnected was her speech that she had to follow it up with a hurriedly organised television interview in order to "apologise" to all of the Tory MPs who had lost their seats thanks to her calamitous campaign.

More than anything else, this speech captured exactly why Mrs. May must not be allowed to carry on as prime minister.  The speech bespoke an absolute determination to ignore any circumstances that don't suit her.  It shed light on Mrs. May's utter inflexibility.  Here was someone who was so myopic and incapable that she couldn't even acknowledge the earth-shaking circumstances that everyone else was talking about and which had brought her to this pass in the first place.  She couldn't move from her script.  She couldn't develop a quick response to her massively changed circumstances.  She couldn't find it within herself to express any sort of empathetic understanding to her disappointed supporters and allies.

And if she couldn't do this simple task, part of the basic toolbox of political leadership, then how on earth could we expect her to manage the infinitely more challenging unpredictable and difficult Brexit negotiations?

I thought originally that Theresa May should stay and provide some continuity in difficult times, even if those times were largely of her own creation.

Now it seems to me that if we are to have any chance of a successful start to our increasingly unwanted and unloved Brexit negotiations, then Theresa May has to be replaced immediately.  All those foolish Tories who think she will be able to open such negotiations with imagination and flexibility, who have you been listening to?  For Theresa May, alarmingly and bizarrely, "nothing has changed".  This is a woman who can row back on a policy and claim it is the same one.  That level of delusion has now been extended to some sort of weird understanding of the election that suggests it has said nothing of value to her.

The Tory Party may be in a bind because of the lack of top rate talent in its upper echelons, but at the moment almost anyone - obviously excluding Liam Fox - would be better than the delsuional, mad force currently in charge.  Instead of ringing their hands and moaning about her advisers, Tory MPs should step up to the moment and actually try and serve their country.  And they should do it by providing new and better leadership.  If they do, in time we might forgive them for the Mayist aberration.

Tempers have calmed down a bit in the more extreme fringes of the media and the decision of the Supreme Court justices - by an 8-3 majority - to reiterate the lower court ruling that parliament is sovereign when it comes to legislation, may be greeted by rather less fuss than met the original lower court conclusion.

In part, this may be because the fanatical Brexiters have now realised that their precious project - whatever form it finally takes - isn't going to be blocked by parliament.  The rage of the Sun and Daily Mail tribe and all their acolytes was never about constitutional propriety and always about the invidious cheek of anyone daring to challenge Brexit.  But parliament will accede to May's request to initiate Article 50.  It was always going to.

I forget what the Spectator magazine stance was when the first ruling was made, but editor Fraser Nelson has this time produced a careful and effective acknowledgement of why the Supreme Court was right.  It's well worth a read since it encapsulates the issue of both constitutional power in Britain and also links it coherently with one of the Brexit demands - that British institutions reign supreme, without foreign oversight.

It's also refreshing to read because the Spectator have had a tendency in recent weeks to publish more irrational right-wing rants than they used to.  They've always made room for Rod Liddle and Brendan O'Neill, who are virtual caricatures of the angry loon shaking his fist at everything in the world, but they seem to be adding to their number in some of their features.  I read an egregious piece a couple of weeks ago railing against the unadulterated teaching of liberal nostrums in our schools.  Utter fantasy but why let facts ruin a good rant?  Anyway, Nelson has moved the balance back a bit this week which is good news as I've always had a soft spot for venerable weekly.

It was a commonplace amongst Brexit campaigners that they wanted a return to the sovereignty of the British parliament.  They wanted British laws judged by British courts.  What they didn’t tell us was that they only wanted that if it agreed with them. 

An independent judiciary and the separation of courts and political partisanship have long been held to be the foundation stones of healthy democratic societies.  So long as courts remain above the fray then political acts can be called to account and subjected to an impartial judgement.  Politicians can too, if the need arises.  We have a strong legal system because it protects us.  We have it because we, the people, deserve that protection against the unbounded ambitions of our political leaders. 

Parliament offers up a different level of protection, but one that is no less crucial to the well-being a state’s citizens.  With proper parliamentary scrutiny, a government – the executive – cannot get away with arbitrary rule or unchecked authority, the key components of dictatorships throughout history.  It is always a dangerous sign when the leaders of an executive in a democratic society start to rail against the very institutions designed to stop their descent into arbitrary and dictatorial rule. 

It was the desire to ensure that such institutions of checking distant authority were local and robust that infused so much of the Brexit leaders’ campaigning.  One of their primary complaints against the European Union was the lack of accountability of its too distant institutions. 

The unbounded Brexit hysteria about the High Court’s ruling on Article 50 has revealed them to be little more than the populist demagogues we always suspected, rather than the guardians of a uniquely British system of calling power to account.  It is a bizarre reversal.  Their Brexit view takes on a different perspective.  Perhaps their railing against the EU was not about constitutional principle all along, but simply about the fact that they detested its political views. 

And then there is the marvellous, if wholly misleading, invocation of the “people’s will” in the Brexit criticism of the High Court.  The “people” do not act as one, and never have.  In the Brexit referendum the “people” were pretty broadly split.  Just under 17.5 million people did indeed vote to leave, but just over 16 million voted to stay.  That is a difference of less than 4%.  By no reckoning was the vote a sweeping indication of the will of all of the British people.  Nigel Farage, the defining  figure of the campaign, certainly never used to consider such a small majority to be decisive.  He claimed – before the referendum – that if only a 4% majority voted to stay in the EU, then the referendum would have to be re-run.  So the “people” cannot be invoked on the Brexiters’ side without substantial qualification.

Theresa May’s initial virtue as a new Prime Minister – one who has not of course received any mandate as leader from the British electorate – was that she understood the need to act upon the result of a referendum in which she had played only a very lukewarm role.  She was right in that.  But where she has begun to sully her reputation is in her failure to recognise that the democratic authority of the referendum was severely limited.  Limited by its tiny majority, and limited by the fact that it provided only a simple decision – to leave the EU – but left unanswered any questions about how, or even why.  Certainly the referendum provided no guidance on the mechanism of leaving.  This is where parliament correctly reasserts itself.

The UK is still a parliamentary democracy.  The occasional use of referendums doesn’t alter that.  At best, the referendums provide a direction of travel.  They do not suddenly cede a mythical popular authority to a government to do whatever it will, without recourse to parliament.  The dictators of the twentieth century favoured plebiscites as a form of underpinning for their own regimes.  Theresa May and her government are nowhere near that line, but they are favouring a similar methodology for their own purposes.

The response of the Brexit press to the High Court ruling has been rabble-rousing, inaccurate and unappealing.  It has placed the ruling as an attempt to stop Brexit rather than an attempt to restore the sort of parliamentary sovereignty that Brexiters once advocated.  It is one thing for a fickle, commercial and foreign-owned press to be irresponsible and wilfully ignorant.  It is quite another when the government in power seems to go along with it.  The Justice Secretary has revealed herself to be nothing more than a craven political hack, unworthy of the ancient duty and authority of the Lord Chancellor position which is still part of her title.  Mrs. May should be careful not to replicate the tawdry image that her Justice Secretary has acquired.  After all, she has no strong mandate herself.