It had been billed as the crunch meeting when the cabinet would finally decide Britain’s policy on the European Union. Yet when Theresa May’s Brexit war cabinet gathered in the recesses of parliament’s lower ministerial corridor on Wednesday, the prime minister opened by declaring: “We don’t have to decide anything today.”

What ensued was two hours of talks about immigration and the Irish border, followed, a day later, by the first substantive discussion of Britain’s trading relationship with the EU. This weekend, cabinet sources say nothing has been decided. “Even [cabinet secretary] Jeremy Heywood was saying we need to step on the gas a bit and make some decisions,” a cabinet source said. “When Jeremy is saying let’s get a move on, it’s quite striking.”