Theresa May as born-again Christian socialist

Nixon goes to China, Theresa May goes to Germany - or rather she adopts a Teutonic-style plan for workers and consumers to be on company boards, and for shareholders to have powers to properly block bosses' excessive pay.

This is a beefed up version of Labour's policy in the last election: Ed Miliband is dead, long live Ed Miliband as guru of the new Tory party.

What on earth is happening?

Three things:

But there are a few problems with May as born again Christian socialist.

First, many of her Leave colleagues will question whether the point of sloughing off costly Brussels regulation is to put on a skein of potentially more costly home grown rules.

Second, with the UK having voted to exit the EU and full unfettered access to the single market, there are already enough reasons for multinationals to reduce their commitment to the UK. So why given them another reason to move to Dublin or Frankfurt by diminishing their ability to manage themselves as they think fit?

• May: Tories will be 'at the service of working people'

And May does not have to take my word that Tory socialism may be a dangerous cocktail in a post Brexit world.

She only has to look at the words and deeds of the current chancellor, George Osborne, who is touring the world telling anyone who cares to listen that the only way for the UK to thrive out of Europe is to become a massive western Singapore - an offshore financial centre with low costs, much-improved infrastructure and corporate taxes cut so low as to make the UK almost a tax haven.

So if you think the life-or-death battle of ideas is confined to Labour, think again. The Conservative Party is a million miles from working out where it stands and who it represents following our historic vote to break with the Brussels way.