When I heard that Osborne was planning cuts in disability benefits I assumed that he had taken soundings among Tory MPs so that he had support for the measure. It seems I over-estimated him - which given my low opinion of him is quite a feat. Instead, he's given us a second omnishambles Budget. This, though, is only one of several examples of the government’s incompetence.

By this I don’t mean that I think its policies are wrong. I mean it is technically incompetent, in the sense of being unable to implement its intended policies. In Osborne’s case, this was because of a misreading of his party’s mood. This wasn’t an isolated failure. Even Cameron’s sympathizers have criticized the “chumocracy” which distances him from many MPs; as we saw in his (perhaps lucky) failure to win support for intervention in Syria, he lacks the darker skills of politics, the ability to cajole MPs to support him.

This is not the only sort of failure. Theresa May’s attempts to deport students has been found to be not just illegal but monstrously badly administered. And IDS’s unlamented resignation has reminded us of the serial cock-ups in introducing Universal Credit. In these cases – as in David Cameron’s letter to Oxfordshire Council a few weeks ago – we see a government incapable of grasping detail.

What’s more, the government doesn’t even understand what politics is. Politics is about what happens when individuals’ plans are mutually irreconcilable – when what’s rational for an individual is collectively self-defeating. It is, therefore, the art of solving problems of collective action. However, Cameron’s encouraging of panic-buying of petrol in 2012 and his mindless talk of the “nation’s credit card” show that he has consistently failed to grasp this point.

What we have, therefore, is a government which does doesn’t appreciate what politics is – and one which therefore fails in party management and in administration. This might be because of a form of deformation professionelle: politics has become so dominated by spin that ministers fail to appreciate that it requires skills other than just PR.

All this poses the question: if the Tories are so technically incompetent, why did they win the election?

Partly, it’s because the game is biased in its favour.

Also, though, it’s because the things I’m describing aren’t confined to the Tories; New Labour was also guilty of poor administration.

What’s more, the Left too has largely lost the art of politics. Inspired perhaps by the epigones of 1960s feminists misusing the slogan “the personal is political”, a lot of what passes as “political” discourse is in fact the mere narcissistic revelation of personality. The possibility that there is or should be a difference between private and public selves – brilliantly described by Richard Sennett – has been forgotten. Also forgotten is the art of rhetoric; how many political writers start – as they should – with the question: how can I persuade sceptics or opponents to agree with me?

In this sense, politics is a dying, perhaps even dead, art. Most of those who claim to take an interest in it are not really interested in how to govern the public sphere: if they were there’d much more interest in the social sciences. Instead, they're mere spectators in a wrestling match who are booing baddies and cheering goodies.

The success of once-fringe characters such as Trump, Farage and even Corbyn are double symptoms of this death. On the one hand, their popularity is due in part to voters wanting people to speak for them, regardless of the question of whether their urges are implementable or practical. But on the other, it is due to the failure of the Establishment and centrists to make their case.

Sadly, though, all sides are so encased in their partisan narcissism that they can’t see this. Fish never know they’re wet.