Twenty years after Princess Diana’s death, and despite official reports insisting there was no foul play, 38 per cent of us suspect the fatal crash in Paris was not an accident. Pollsters find even highly outlandish theories commanding noticeable support. Ten per cent of Britons regard global warming as a hoax, for example, and nearly one in 20 blames the Aids virus on a secret organisation that deliberately infected vulnerable groups with it.

But one idea is so far-fetched that it can’t compete with the world-wild-web’s fakest theories. It’s the idea that bankers and policy-makers responsible for the 2008 financial crisis have been properly punished. Only one per cent believe they have. We’re more likely to believe in UFOs. Some 84 per cent say the people who sank the stock markets and threw so many out of work have “got away with it” and, moreover, remain powerful.

As we seek to understand Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory and, more recently, Corbynmania and yesterday’s near annihilation of France’s traditional parties, we must recognise that a decade of events might now be behind us but the public anger has not passed. It may even be growing.

The ascendancy of politicians who promised to steady the ships of state in the immediate post-crash period has ended. The Tory general election campaign’s “strong and stable” mantra wasn’t just ineffective because voters saw through the manipulative technique as an insult to their intelligence. It was primarily ineffective because change is becoming more popular than continuity. Most hungry for something different are the public-sector workers whose deep-frozen wages are falling further behind inflation.

There are the thrifty who fear lifetime savings might never earn them serious interest. And then there are young families whose dream of home ownership is undermined by foreign buyers who snap up so many of the new houses that are getting built.

The politician who was the impatient mood’s biggest victim was Hillary Clinton. Blind to the rage bubbling away in “flyover country”, America’s former First Lady filled the pockets of her trademark pant suits by accepting Gordon Gecko-sized speaker fees from Wall Street banks that had all too recently been bailed out by Main Street. The greed helped doom her presidential bid. Her robotic speaking style, tired policy ideas and overdependence on a small team of advisers ended in humiliation at the hands of an “unelectable” political outsider.

Tory MPs, returning in a shell-shocked daze to Westminster for this week’s low-fat, low-content Queen’s Speech, must quickly recognise that Theresa May is as finished as Mrs Clinton. Every day she remains in charge is a wasted day. Every day the country inches closer to an election for which Jeremy Corbyn will have added more activists to his impressive turnout machine. Equally, the Conservatives will have one less day to rebuild their own offering and operation.

Mrs May’s flat-footed response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy was not just further proof she’s not that good at politics. It was another moment of not rising to the occasion as a leader with vision would do. The horrific burning alive of largely poor and marginalised people was — like 2008’s crash — another reminder of unjustifiable vulnerabilities at the bottom of society and inadequate responsibility from those at the top.

The most fitting memorial to those who perished is not to comfort the bereaved as all half-decent societies would. The best way of honouring the dead would be to deliver the scale of house-building that Conservative PMs such as Churchill and Macmillan championed but which an ideologically rigid Thatcherite dogma has since discouraged. For good measure, a government building more homes in the South would also significantly expand infrastructure in the North. The everyday so-called current government spending still needs trimming but leaving the next generation with inadequate roads, railways and broadband is just as irresponsible as leaving them up to their necks in debt.

I’d put believing that Elvis Presley is still alive on equal par with the claim that Mrs May could launch this agenda or something similar. Despite the words she uttered in Downing Street after first becoming PM she has done nothing of consequence for communities suffering most from the multigeddon of globalisation, open borders, automation and the collapse of the working-class family.

Rather than overhauling a threadbare party machine that helped lose a 20 per cent opinion poll lead, she has reappointed her Tory chairman. Those thinking the days of treating her Cabinet with disdain are over should look at her careless loss of two of the Brexit department’s four key ministers last weekend, a week before today’s starting gun for talks.

Whether it’s her poorly designed child- abuse inquiry that hasn’t yet done any inquiring, the national insurance U-turn or the dementia tax debacle, her lack of grip of policy detail does not suggest she’s equipped for the Brexit negotiations. Moreover, because of her Ukip-lite tactical positioning, she has not created particularly strong relations with European counterparts.

A new PM and a contest necessary to establish who it should be will not be good for the nation’s immediate peace of mind or for business sentiment, but there are no easy options from where we are. What Britain does have is a two- to three-month window before September’s German elections. After that, Brexit negotiations will be fast and furious.

The Tories need a contest thorough enough to identify a team as much as a leader, and an agenda for social renewal as much as for Brexit. With both established, there is a real chance of stopping the momentum building behind Jeremy Corbyn — and it must be stopped. His views on tax, state power and defence would enfeeble this country.

We must not underestimate Corbyn. Voters who yearn for change may well roll the dice if forced to choose between Corbyn and “the same old Tories”. If, after all, people can convince themselves that the moon landings were staged, they may even believe Corbyn is equipped for Britain’s highest office.

Tim Montgomerie is editor of the forthcoming current affairs website, UnHerd.com