Tired and small: Theresa May’s appearance while delivering her January speech emulated the way the UK will appear to the rest of the world after Brexit.

Now both of the people who wrote Theresa May’s landmark (read: disastrous) Brexit speech in January have jumped off the sinking Tory ship of state.

Chris Wilkins, who resigned as her director of strategy before she scurried off on her walking holiday in Italy, co-wrote Mrs May’s Brexit speech, delivered in January, in which she outlined her plan for the hardest of ‘hard’ exits from the European Union.

The other writer was Nick Timothy, her chief of staff, who resigned the day after Mrs May’s Conservative Party lost their Parliamentary majority in the general election.

At the time, This Writer commented that “It is astonishing to see political commentators attempting to take Theresa May’s Brexit speech seriously. They should attack it for the rubbish it is.

“It is all nonsense and waffle. Theresa Mayfly might just as well have stood up and spent her time saying “Blah blah blah Brexit,” over and over again.

“She wants us to be both outside and inside the customs union at the same time… She said that both Houses of Parliament would be able to vote on any final Brexit deal – but did not explain what kind of vote this would be. It seems she wants to provide the illusion that our democratic institutions are involved, while actually trying to blackmail them into supporting her.

“One aspect we can all agree we knew already was Mrs Mayfly’s determination to control immigration – despite the fact that, as Home Secretary, she had access to EU-approved controls on immigration for six years and never used them. So her words, that while wanting to continue to attract “the brightest and best to study and work in Britain”, “we will get control over [the] number of people coming to Britain from the EU” ring hollow.

“A more plausible reason for leaving the single market, then, is Mrs Mayfly’s determination to stop the European Court of Justice determining matters relating to the UK – but she couldn’t even be honest about this. The European Court has influence only on matters of EU law, and cannot overrule any country on its own national law. Restrictions imposed by the European Court include maintaining workers’ rights, for example, and the quality of goods. Mrs Mayfly wants to scrap UK workers’ rights – and that’s why she wants us to leave the single market. But she didn’t want you to know that, so it seems the Tories have instructed their compliant media to distract us with complaints about immigration instead.”

Would you like me to go on? You can read the full article here.

In the days after the June 8 election, Timothy and Fiona Hill, May’s joint chiefs of staff, quit, followed by the head and deputy head of her policy unit. Three senior communications advisers have also resigned since she called the vote.

Clearly both Mr Wilkins and Mr Timothy, at least, were not up to the jobs they held for Mrs May.

On the face of it, then, she should be glad to have seen the back of them.

The trouble is, prime ministers tend to start out with the pick of the advisors available to them – the best choice they could possibly have.

And that would put Mrs May in deep, deep trouble.

Of course, it is possible that Mrs May’s preferred choices were bad – but that would call her judgement into question.

And that would put Mrs May in deep, deep trouble.

In fact, given the information we’ve seen about the NHS, schools, Grenfell Tower, the trade talks with the US (chlorinated chicken, anyone) and pretty much every other decision made by the Conservatives, it seems that if anything is clear…

It is that Mrs May should be in deep, deep trouble.

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