Four little words define this media week. They are “stability” and “transparency”, as hymned by Karen Bradley, the relevant secretary of state presenting the terms of the BBC’s new royal charter, that hallowed agreement designed to keep Britain’s national broadcaster “independent”. And then there’s “absurdity”.

Consider the stability record of the past 10 years. In 2010, PM Cameron and director general Thompson do a grudging deal that foists World Service funding, broadband funding, local TV startup funding, Channel 4 Welsh-language funding – and any other bit of funding going – on to the corporation. In 2015, chancellor Osborne duly foists free licence-fee funding for over-75s on Tony Hall, Thompson’s successor. Two backstage, totally non-transparent bits of arm-twisting from Cameron (dear departed) and Osborne (near departed).

Since May 2015, Mr Secretary Whittingdale has come and gone. But the fog he left behind has in no way lifted with arrival of Bradley, a bit of a blank slate where media matters are concerned. The BBC Trust, supreme regulator of corporation affairs, is on its last legs – officially dead from 1 January 2017. Whittingdale mysteriously called in a banker, Sir David Clementi, to produce a report administering the last rites. (Question: what on Earth was transparent about that?)

Cameron, in the middle of a pre-Brexit maelstrom, asked Rona Fairhead, the trust chairman, to stop on until 2018 to smooth the path as a unitary board took over BBC governance, with regulation passing to Ofcom and financial scrutiny to the National Audit Office. But now she’s been unceremoniously, rather brutally, dumped.

The BBC has won some things: an 11-year charter to dodge the next election but one; a majority of execs and non-execs on the board. But it’s lost on disguising the salaries it pays to presenters in the £150,000-a-year range: no anonymity for “talent” top to bottom. Most of all though, it’s lost on timing: on any real chance of stability.

In just three and a half months, with an ad hoc transition extension to April, it has to liaise with HMG and help install that ruling board, with obeisances to full transparency on the recruitment front and all that sluggardly jazz. Ofcom, meanwhile, will need to construct its own new content board to handle BBC regulation, and staff it with independent, respected people. Oh! and meanwhile the Great British Bake Off has waltzed off to C4.

In short: no transparency. None of the policy lurches on responsibility, funding, regulation or anything else have been settled in plain view. No trace of stability. We’ve moved from 2010 economic crisis with Dave and Mark to George trying to make his economic plan look better by shovelling £750m or so onto Tony; and nothing has stayed the same. Including Cameron, Osborne and that plan.

Will calm, experienced Theresa do any better? There’s scant sign of it. In an ordered world, all this governance stuff would have been sorted out long since. But Brexit got in the way – and now it’s bound to be a disorderly scramble, with mistakes made in haste, repented at select committee leisure, and squeezed into the first three months of next year, when charter schedules are informally relaxed to allow everyone to carry on bailing. Of course Fairhead’s translation from trust to board was another quick fix, but it made sense on the continuity count. Now there is no continuity.

And the essential issues remain. Can Bradley and her team be relied on to appoint a chair (plus four non-execs for the nations and regions) who play a full part on a cohesive board? Remember how, a few months ago, Sir David Normington, the government’s retiring deliverer of jobs for purified applicants, launched a stunning attack on some fiddly Cameronian changes that made it easier to get compliant placemen in the right spots. Is that a gambit that May will preserve? (Come to think of it, why does she want to get herself involved so infernally quickly?)

The BBC is not some bog-standard sub-nationalised industry. It competes in a ruthless, baked-off, browned-off arena. Instant comparisons with prime-ministerial pay scales don’t work. David Cameron has moved on, in failure, to write his book and bestride fresh boardrooms. Many showbiz presenters (Bake Off again) are paid by the independent production company that delivers the show. Their contracts are off limits. It’s only 100 or so frontline presenters for the BBC whose salaries are involved here – with all the natural explosion of demands when Presenter A finds out that Presenter B gets a fatter cheque. Bradley’s notion that enforced transparency cuts wage costs in this climate is a hoot. As delivered, it looks more like another ball and chain.

Naturally the BBC can’t wail too openly. It reckons that maintaining the licence fee is its central objective. If it can do that – more or less – then Hall can hail “an opportunity to write the next chapter in our history, [delivering] the strong and creative BBC the public believes in…” But no one should kid themselves about this outcome.

There are mystic hurdles marked “significant distinctiveness” (ie niche programming) to define and vault. There’s a structure that for the first time puts strategy and regulation in the hands of chairs the BBC didn’t choose: two strikes and they’re out. There are messy fingers – political fingers, press fingers – stirring the talent pot as though fronting Strictly Come Dancing fell into the same category of public service as running the Healthcare Commission. There’s stability until the next reshuffle, transparency until Whitehall pulls the curtains and independence on a short, frayed leash.

Charter renewal? Another exhausting, hard-fought draw. But nothing, as ever, is really settled. The covert tug-of-influence goes on. And it’s absurd to expect anything else.