Like the Living Dead in a second-rate horror film, the premiership of Theresa May staggers on oblivious. This was not supposed to be in the script.

It was universally acknowledged by Tory MPs after her disastrous, wooden performance in the election campaign that she could never lead them in to an election again. To stave off an immediate execution in June, she adopted two tactics.

First, like King Charles I before her, she offered up the heads of her deeply unpopular advisers instead. “It wasn’t my fault that I’ve alienated my entire Cabinet and produced a vote-destroying manifesto, it was theirs,” she pleaded.

Second, she told Tory MPs: “You don’t have to go to the trouble of getting rid of me, I’ll jump before I’m pushed.” Or at least that’s what the Tory parliamentary party thought they heard when she said to them on the Monday after the election: “I will serve as long as you want me.”

The settled assumption until this week was that Mrs May would soak up all the damage to the party’s reputation coming in the Brexit negotiations and then hand the premiership over in the summer of 2019 to an unsullied successor.

This morning, those MPs have woken up to discover that Mrs May wants to go on and on — an announcement that appropriately came on a visit close to North Korea.

This wasn’t a case of just dodging the awkward question of when she was quitting. “I want to do a lot more in the long term,” she said, and sketched out an agenda based on social justice and restoring Brexit Britain’s standing in the world.

This leaves Conservative MPs facing the age-old dilemma: do you attempt a mutiny against a bad captain, and risk getting shot — or do you resign yourself to going down with the ship?

A rudderless Government

Mrs May can count on quite a few choosing the latter course. There are some Tory MPs who are genuine fans — although these days there are no more than half-a-dozen of them.

Then there are the Brexit headbangers, who think losing the next election is a price worth paying for a hard departure from the EU.

There’s always the solid centre-of-Government ministers and whips — Disraeli’s Mr Taper and Mr Tadpole — who will happily serve under pretty much anyone, and who think “better the devil you know — at least I’ve got a job under this leader”.

You have the growing number of Conservatives who fancy their chances in the future leadership contest but who need Mrs May to stay for a couple more years while they raise their profile.

They will have checked their odds online when they heard the wise William Hague say yesterday “that the next leader of the Conservative Party is probably somebody who today is 60 to 1 against at the bookies”.

Finally, there are the frontrunners — the David Davises and Boris Johnsons of the Cabinet. They’d love the top job but fear that “he who wields the knife never wears the crown”.

Margaret Thatcher proved that axiom was wrong when she seized the initiative to bring down an uncharismatic Tory leader who had called an early election and lost their majority.

All these separate agendas leave Britain with a Prime Minister in office but not in power. Does that matter? Yes.

For those who want an alternative to the dangers of Jeremy Corbyn it means the urgent task facing Conservatives — of trying to win back the young, the better-educated, the urban and the ethnic minority voters they lost — will be delayed until it may be too late.

For those who want a pragmatic approach to Brexit it means the necessary compromises aren’t forthcoming because leading ministers don’t want to risk alienating the Tory Brexit wing ahead of a future leadership contest.

For the country it means we continue to have a rudderless Government when we face huge challenges beyond Brexit, as our economy falls behind and our place in the world is diminished. Britain deserves a better movie than this.