ONLY six months ago Theresa May seemed all-powerful. Yet the snap election that was supposed to deliver a landslide for the Conservatives instead took away their majority, and with it every shred of the prime minister’s authority. The minority government is paralysed: it lacks the numbers to get anything meaningful through Parliament; the cabinet is unable to agree on anything, or to disguise the fact; and the party is terrified of ousting its feeble leader, lest the subsequent civil war let in the newly rampant Labour Party.

Zombie governments like Mrs May’s can stagger on for a long time. John Major spent most of his six years in office in the 1990s fighting assassination attempts by his own backbenchers, yet the ship of state chugged on. The difference today is that Britain is steaming towards the Niagara Falls of Brexit. If Mrs May does not take charge, Britain will plunge over without a deal in March 2019. She should start by replacing her mutinous, incompetent cabinet with a new crew.

Take back control

Time is terrifyingly short. The substance of the Brexit talks will be concluded about a year from now. Next week European leaders will decide whether enough progress has been made on Britain’s exit bill and the Irish border to move on to discuss trade and transition arrangements, as Britain wants. It is in everyone’s interests to do so: a rule of negotiations is that considering everything in the same bundle maximises the scope for deals. Instead, France and Germany seem minded to make Britain wait. As well as reducing the chances of a mutually good outcome, this increases the risk of the talks breaking down altogether. European negotiators are correct to think that the airy talk in London of walking away with “no deal” is a bluff. What they do not realise is that Britain’s chaotic political conditions mean that it could happen anyway (see article).

That chaos has been encouraged by Boris Johnson, who published his own 4,000-word Brexit manifesto in a newspaper days before a big speech last month by the prime minister, and drew up “red lines” in an interview afterwards which flatly contradicted the government’s position. The foreign secretary’s disloyalty is hardly offset by his skills as a diplomat. He is ridiculed abroad and disliked in the Foreign Office. Until recently he gave the impression of wanting to be sacked, the better to mount a leadership bid. But now even Brexiteer Tory MPs have tired of him. Mrs May should cut him loose.

She should not stop there. The cabinet is stuffed with has-beens and never-weres, who achieved little even when the government had a majority. Chris Grayling, Andrea Leadsom and Priti Patel are among those ripe for relegation to the backbenches. Purging ministers who voted for Brexit would provoke calls to even things up by sacking some Remainers. A campaign is being waged to unseat Philip Hammond, the competent chancellor, who favours a softer Brexit. A better idea would be to promote a new generation of Tory MPs, many of whom happen to be enthusiastic Brexiteers. The likes of Rishi Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng and Nusrat Ghani would bring talent to the cabinet, and diversity—not least in terms of age, the biggest divide in British politics.

Reshuffling her ministers will not solve all Mrs May’s problems. The Tories will still be irreparably split on the most important issue facing Britain. But promoting some new faces with new ideas and a dash of competence would give the government a better shot at dealing with it. It would also prepare the ground for Mrs May’s eventual handover to a new leader. The next generation of MPs offers an embarrassment of riches. Too many of the current cabinet are just an embarrassment.