Only a couple of days now before Britain bids a relieved farewell to the worst prime minister in history. But let’s give credit where credit is due: it wasn’t just Theresa May who was so sublimely useless; it was her entire administration.

Under Remainer Chancellor Philip Hammond, Britain’s tax burden has risen to its highest in over 40 years.

Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, was heard as recently as last week not pleading to be spared exile to the backbenches (as she deserves) but rather strutting around like some prize hen as if she still owned the whole barnyard, clucking that any future Cabinet in Boris Johnson’s government should have a 50/50 gender split.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove is so committedly in thrall to green lunacy it seems there is nothing he will not sacrifice to Gaia’s sinister, pig-tailed avatar Greta Thunberg: the plastics industry, the British countryside, shooting folk, the millions more birds and bats that this Net Zero policy will help slice and dice — if Ed Miliband or Ed Davey had been running the department it could scarcely have been any worse.

Even the supposedly sounder ones like Home Secretary Sajid Javid think and act more like throwbacks from the Blair era. The other day he took time out of his busy schedule to side with Ilhan Omar and the Squad over Britain’s most important ally Donald Trump. Yes, I realise that the people who write his briefings are all doctrinaire Remainers and leftists. Even so, what business does a supposed Conservative minister have having a go at President who is simply speaking up for common sense, putting a treacherous leftist Islamist back in her box and pushing the Overton window in a rightwards direction? Instead of virtue-signalling against his own side wouldn’t it have been better if Javid had just kept schtumm?

I could go on. But there isn’t space. Pretty much May’s entire administration was made up of liberal-lefties, green sellouts, closet Lib Dems, conservatives in name only, and diehard Remainers.

How — future historians will no doubt ask — could a government wearing the Conservative label and elected by a Conservative-leaning electorate on a Conservative ticket have behaved in so spectacularly un-Conservative a fashion for so long?

Well let me help solve the mystery.

Theresa May buried a massive clue towards the end of that characteristically godawful farewell speech she inflicted on an unsuspecting audience at Chatham House in London last week.

If you’re having trouble sleeping or you’re about to be shot by firing squad and you want to make your last five minutes feel like five years you can read the full version here.

Otherwise, I’ll cut to the chase and just quote the key moment:

For the future, if we can recapture the spirit of common purpose – as I believe we must – then we can be optimistic about what together we can achieve. We can find the common ground that will enable us to forge new, innovative global agreements on the most crucial challenges of our time – from protecting our planet to harnessing the power of technology for good.

Ah yes. The spirit of “common purpose”.

Common Purpose, as I’m sure most of you will know — it crops up often enough in the comments — is the self-described “leadership development” charity founded by Julia Middleton in 1989.

Actually, as most of you will also know, it’s much more dangerous than that. Indeed, I’d argue that apart from the BBC it’s the organisation that has probably done most to inculcate politically correct thinking and practices across the entirety of our culture. Common Purpose is the Cultural Marxist outfit which has infiltrated and subverted every one of our public (and many of our private) institutions: it’s like Antonio Gramsci’s most vivid wet dream made real.

You can read the back story on Common Purpose here. This paragraph sums up the problem:

In fact, CP is an elitest pro-EU political organisation helping to replace democracy in UK, and worldwide, with CP chosen ‘elite’ leaders. In truth, their hidden networks and political objectives are undermining and destroying our democratic society and are threatening ‘free will’ in adults, teenagers and children. Their work is funded by public money and big business, including international banks.

Whether Theresa May was specifically referring to this organisation or whether it was merely a happy coincidence really doesn’t matter for the purposes of my argument. All you need to know is that the values of Theresa May and her administration and that the values in which Common Purpose graduates are indoctrinated are one and the same.

What are those values?

Everything you hate about political correctness, basically. Everything you associate with Cultural Marxism. The kind of values which Hayek, in his Road to Serfdom, would have classified as “collectivist”: that is, the values you associate with totalitarian regimes like the Soviet communists and the Nazis, but most definitely not values — or so Hayek and his ilk would argue — that have any place in a liberal democracy.

Let me give you a few examples: identity politics; feminism; anything to do with “sustainability” and “diversity”; the idea that the Nanny State knows better than individuals how people should live their lives; anti-white policies masquerading as anti-racism; discrimination against private schools and other designated boo-word elites pretending to be about fairness; equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity; censorship; compulsory promotion of LGBTQ values in schools; climate propaganda in schools; special treatment for favoured minority groups (e.g. Muslims); special treatment for unfavoured minority groups (e.g. Tommy Robinson and the white working classes generally); every stupid policy on gender, race, disability and so on emanating from the annoying cows in your HR department at work…

When Boris takes over on Tuesday and he wants to take Britain in a positive direction, his job is much easier than he might imagine.

All he needs to do is stop and think for a moment: “What would Theresa do?”

Then all he needs to do is the precise opposite.

Simple.