Mrs May has decided that the time has come to crush the resistance by the ultimate sanction of a general election, with all the risks that entails. She has invited this Rump Parliament of the pre-Brexit era to dissolve itself, though not in terms quite as harsh as Oliver Cromwell’s: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” The new Parliament will, we must hope, be representative of the new dispensation, not the old. But even assuming she is right, there is always the danger that the revolution might go too far and end by devouring its own children.

Mrs May’s leadership will be required to ensure that Brexit won’t (as Donald Tusk declared) be a horror movie directed by Hitchcock, but more like Laurence Olivier’s Henry V. The play ends, not with the victory of Agincourt, but with Henry’s gentler conquest of the French Princess Katherine. When the latter asks if it is possible for her to love the enemy of France, Henry woos her thus: “No; it is not possible you should love the enemy of France, Kate; but, in loving me, you should love the friend of France; for I love France so well, that I will not part with a village of it; I will have it all mine: and, Kate, when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine.” She replies: “I cannot tell vat is dat.” There is no reason why post-Brexit relations with Europe should be any less good-humoured; after all, the British have not just slaughtered the flower of the French nobility, or anybody else for that matter, but are merely exercising their legal right to leave the European Union.

Mrs May’s watchwords are certainty, stability and strong leadership. She needs to demonstrate leadership in order to preserve stability and banish uncertainty. She has promised that “we will regain control of our own money, our own laws and our own borders”. But the United Kingdom will only be free to chart its way in the world if it really is united. A large majority for the May government would probably see off the threat of another Scottish referendum, especially if Nicola Sturgeon receives the result in this election that the SNP’s indifferent record in government deserves.

The real challenge to any Conservative prime minister worthy of the name is not the break-up of the UK, but its political, social and cultural hollowing out from within. To reinvigorate the body politic, Mrs May cannot preserve it in a state of suspended animation while negotiations with Brussels drag on; she must deliver a full programme of reform at the same time as Brexit. She may not be a thinker, but she is certainly thoughtful. Right now she needs the visionary courage of a Thomas More combined with the ruthless realpolitik of a Niccolo Machiavelli. She must be a woman for all seasons: not only now, in the springtime of a Europe of nations, but later, too, in the winter of our discontent. Over the next seven weeks, she needs to give the electorate a much clearer notion of her aims and values. Not the sense of an ending, but of a new beginning; not just the necessary but negative goal of disengagement from Europe, but the positive inspiration of a greater, more gracious Britain. Theresa May must be the Prime Minister of a kingdom united in the pursuit of life, liberty and, yes, Western civilisation.