Karl Marx wrote in the eighteenth brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, quoting Hegel, ”all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He (Hegel) forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.

I wrote yesterday that Team Theresa May's founding philosophy appears to be 'if at first you don't succeed, make precisely the same mistake again - but even harder'.

Wednesday's attempt at a punishment briefing for Simon Stevens, and his subsequent PAC hearing went so well for Team TM that they've tried it again. Hurrah!

Perhaps this could be a regular series? 'In today's briefing against Simon Stevens, the PM's office made themselves look ineffectual and silly by ...'

It could run and run.

Or dribble and dribble.

One of those options.

Calm down! Calm down! Calm down, dear!
What could be more effective than channelling Harry Enfield's Scousers, Michael Winner's insurance ad campaign slogan and David Cameron's patronising of Angela Eagle?

Nothing.

Nothing could be more effective than that.

All of those characters are exactly the kind of role models to which the British public responds brilliantly.

So good old Team TM, clearly motivated to give the NHS community a bloody good laugh ahead of the weekend, briefed the Telegraph that Simon Stevens will only keep his job in the long term "as long as things calm down".

Anyone who is Scooby-positive about what's happening in there NHS realises that things are not going to 'calm down'.

As I wrote yesterday, the shit has hit the fan and the fan is now turned on, and will be getting up to full speed over the next few weeks.

Infants amusing infantry
But in all seriousness, Team TM might as well reinvent themselves as comedic figures.

Because it's only the poor bloody infantry staffing the NHS keeping the system upright. Even if more money were made available immediately, there is no unused pool of staff waiting to rush in. There is a broken-looking market in social care. Brexit Britain may not look a wildly attractive destination to international clinical staff, with our falling currency worth less in theirs.

So perhaps Team TM have realised they May as well give the NHS a damn good laugh, since they can't make things better for the NHS staff team any other way in the short term.

In this reading, they are possessed of subversive motivational-tactical genius.

In the other reading of course, they're just political infants who don't or won't learn their lesson.

One of those options.