ON Sunday, Theresa May told us that when she “became Prime Minister two years ago I committed to lead a Government that put the interests of working people first. I set out my vision of a stronger and fairer Britain”.

Curiously, her article omitted to mention that, just over a year ago, she called a snap general election and presented this vision to the electorate, which found it so convincing that it reduced her party from 330 to 317 MPs, losing her a perfectly workable majority and undermining any notion that she was up to the job.

As it turned out, her total uselessness during the campaign made it clear that she wasn’t; it’s just that the uselessness of the leadership of all of the other political parties was equally total, and in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, potentially totalitarian. So Mrs May now wants her exciting new Conservative Policy Commission to “undertake the most extensive exercise of policy renewal ever conducted by a party in government”.

Sceptics may wonder why, if the vision of a “stronger and fairer Britain” devised a couple of years ago was so brilliant that Mrs May deserves to carry on being Prime Minister, we need this root-and-branch exercise in rethinking policy. The cynical may even wonder if it’s because Mrs May appears to be making a pig’s ear of every issue she attempts to tackle.

The most constructive suggestion for Tory renewal would probably be “replace your leader” but let’s approach the enterprise in the dismal awareness that, while the Prime Minister is undoubtedly toast, we’re stuck with the current set-up for now.

The knottiest problems are to do with Brexit, and the reason they have become Gordian is that Mrs May, who voted Remain, has no real understanding of what people wanted when they voted Leave. To be fair, many of them didn’t, either, and even those who did disagreed among themselves about what they wanted.

But finding the optimal solutions, and any agreement on them, became impossible when she triggered Article 50 without first working out whether a European Free Trade Agreement or European Economic Area solution would provide enough change to satisfy voters and instead idiotically pandered to the (minority) Brexit camp that seemed to think it was all about immigration.

We are where we are, though, and some suggestions can be made. The first is that the Government must deliver change, so anything that seriously impedes the ability to forge new trade deals or to redraft UK regulation or legislation must be rejected, unless the gains to be made are significant.

We must at least attempt to be in a better position in the end, even if it takes a while. That means a better position than when we were in the EU, so matters like European Court of Justice oversight or regulatory alignment would be worth offering, if at all, only in limited spheres, and if we otherwise retain a free hand. I don’t include restricting free movement, though Mrs May may feel (and, unfortunately, may be right to feel) that that is an electoral essential.

It would be better if the Government got out of the whole area of immigration and left it to the market. At any rate, artificial targets should be scrapped, unless she wants the health system, the service economy, the academic and scientific sectors and future pension provision to go down the pan.

Any Conservative renewal also requires a rediscovery of the principles of liberty, enterprise and support for free and open markets the party once professed to support. That means dropping the nanny state measures she’s keen on, such as driving independent restaurants and grocers out of business with food labelling regulations, sugar taxes, ad bans and so on.

Jeremy Hunt needs to recognise that, whatever Jamie Oliver has told him, when your children nag you for too many sweeties, the correct response is to say “No” firmly, not to force the corner shop to move its displays away from the till and require health warnings and ID before you can buy a Twix.

The Tories also need to remember what they once claimed to know: that spending commitments must be paid for, and that that money comes from the taxpayer. Public spending is still nearly 40 per cent of GDP (the best projection is 35 per cent by 2020), considerably higher than countries such as Switzerland, Ireland and Canada that have comparably generous welfare and universal healthcare.

Admittedly, it flew out of control under Labour, from about 2000 on but, during George Osborne’s so-called austerity, the real cut was less than 0.5 per cent a year.

While finding more money for the NHS might have been necessary, and popular, it should be found through economic growth and spending cuts. It should not be a signal for other departments to stick their hands out – even if the defence secretary thinks that the convenient leak of “Mad Dog” Mattis’s letter demanding more defence spending might give him ammunition to use against the Treasury.

Growth, above all, is what the Tories should promote or there will, in any case, be no money for anything. And UK growth is poor, largely because productivity is poor.

Under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition and now the Conservatives, income inequality has reduced and employment increased to an all-time high (those who dispute such claims or mutter about zero-hours contracts can look up the figures), but so has tax.

The UK tax burden (except on the lowest earners, who are better off) is over 34 per cent of GDP, and projected to be at a 40-year high within a few years.

Mrs May is said to want “1,000 new policy suggestions” for her bold new start, but around 990 could probably begin with the word “cut” and the vast majority end either with the words “tax”, “regulations” or “spending”.

If there is to be any Brexit dividend, it will come from the freedom to cut VAT, cut corporation tax, cut planning laws, cut tariffs, cut regulations that stifle manufacturing and non-EU exports, and not merely from the headline figure of cutting out the amount we contribute to the EU budget.

In short, if the Prime Minister wants policies for Conservative renewal, they can be summed up by telling her to behave as if she were the leader of a party that believes in, and delivers, the kinds of things Conservatives once claimed to stand for in the days when they won huge majorities in elections.