LONDON — The key Brexiteers in Theresa May’s Cabinet were all out on show Tuesday, ahead of a big Brexit meeting at which the government is expected to finally agree its negotiating stance on Britain's future relationship with the EU.

The meeting — expected Thursday at the prime minister's country residence, Chequers — will be the culmination of a period of uncertainty that has rumbled on ever since the U.K. triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017.

In that time, May's fortunes have waxed and waned considerably, and with them the fortunes — and leadership chances — of the four key men who represent Brexiteers in her Cabinet.

With help from bookmakers Ladbrokes, here's where they all stood on Article 50 day, where they stand now, and how they did on Tuesday as Brexit enters its crucial second phase.

David Davis and his robotic lawnmower

Leadership odds

Article 50 day: 50/1

Today: 25/1

The Brexit secretary was first out of the blocks Tuesday with his contribution to the government’s "Road to Brexit" series of speeches.

For a while after the Conservatives’ disappointing 2017 election, Davis was many people’s tip for next Tory leader, a caretaker to hold the fort during the Brexit process following May’s botched campaign. But after presiding over a string of parliamentary retreats over Brexit — most notably over the publication of Brexit impact analyses that were initially blocked — his star has dimmed a little. He has also faced constant questions about his relative importance inside the Brexit negotiation team, compared to Olly Robbins, May’s EU sherpa, who now leads a Cabinet Office unit dedicated to Brexit.

The point of Tuesday’s address, delivered to an audience of business leaders in Vienna, was to reassure the EU that the U.K. is not interested in undercutting the bloc in the global marketplace by dropping standards and regulations around workers’ rights, environmental protections and financial services regulation. It also contained a commitment that the U.K. wouldn’t heavily subsidize any British firms that could then out-compete EU ones, dressed up as a call for rules to prevent the EU doing the same to Britain.

But the speech will be remembered for Davis’ decision to reassure us that Brexit will not plunge Britain “into a 'Mad Max'-style world borrowed from dystopian fiction.”

We won’t dwell on Davis’s unique reading of the "Mad Max" franchise — in which brutal gangs maraud a post-apocalyptic desert in armored vehicles — as a comment on the consequences of cutting red tape in the automobile sector. However, Davis may have been disappointed to see that comment be the part of his speech most widely picked up by the media, particularly those skeptical about Brexit. It led to more than one piece questioning why, if Davis has ruled out Mad Max, why has he not ruled out other dystopian Brexit scenarios such as "Blade Runner" Brexit or "Hunger Games" Brexit. The public need answers.

One thing we did learn was that, while Davis was speaking, a Swedish-made robot lawnmower (the existence of which was exclusively revealed by POLITICO) was seeing to his lawn back in North Yorkshire.

Boris Johnson and his 'great swollen throbbing umbilicus of trade'

Leadership odds

Article 50 day: 9/2

Today: 8/1

A year ago, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was a good bet to be the next Conservative leader, but since then he has been supplanted at the top of the pile by the darling of Tory members and backbench Brexiteers, Jacob Rees-Mogg (who on Article 50 day was 50/1 to be the party's next leader and is now the favorite at 7/2).

Johnson's much-anticipated speech last week, the first of the government’s "Road to Brexit" series, failed to improve his standing, which has been diminished by a succession of unforced errors — creating confusion around the status of a U.K. detainee in Iran, a gaffe about war deaths in Libya — and by concerns among backbenchers that his much-discussed leadership ambitions have become a distraction for an already-weak government.

Johnson’s appearance in the House of Commons Tuesday, while not technically a speech, did lay out more of his thinking on Brexit, and focused on his ambitious vision of a road bridge connecting the U.K. to the European continent.

Claiming that the Channel Tunnel was “likely to be full within the next seven years,” Johnson said the bridge project that he briefly discussed with French President Emmanuel Macron at an Anglo-French summit last month should be a matter of “legitimate reflection” and laid out an “ambition” for it to be entirely privately funded. He compared the bridge to his vision of a U.K.-EU trade deal, which he predicted, vividly, would create a “great swollen throbbing umbilicus of trade” between the two sides.

But asked by Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry how it is possible for the U.K. to diverge from EU regulations, tariffs and other aspects of trade, as Johnson wants, while avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland — a matter, she pointed out, that his 5,000-word speech last week did not mention — Johnson said “there is no reason whatsoever” that the U.K. could not leave the customs union and the single market while still maintaining “frictionless trade” across the border. But he declined to say how.

Michael Gove and his delighted farmers

Leadership odds

Article 50 day: 25/1

Today: 8/1

Had he cared to visit the National Farmers' Union conference in Birmingham on Tuesday, Johnson might have looked enviously at a minister whose leadership prospects are heading in the other direction.

Michael Gove was a backbench MP when Article 50 was triggered, consigned to the wilderness after a failed attempt to steal the leadership from under Johnson’s nose back in July 2016. (A contest from which, of course, Theresa May emerged triumphant.)

However, returned to the Cabinet in June 2017 as environment secretary, Gove has re-cast himself as a Brexiteer eco-warrior delivering what he calls a Green Brexit.

He delighted his audience at the NFU conference by giving unequivocal commitments that the U.K. would not sign any post-Brexit trade deals with other countries that “undercut” U.K. farmers “on animal welfare or environmental standards.”

Just such a trade deal with the U.S., Australia or New Zealand is the British farming industry’s worst fear, and they were happy to hail a minister committed to protecting them from it. Gove said his view was not at odds with International Trade Secretary Liam Fox on this, telling the Huffington Post that he and Fox not only sing from “the same hymn sheet, we finish each other’s sentences.” He also gave farmers cause to hope the U.K. might adopt a liberal immigration policy toward seasonal workers, telling his hosts that while they would have to wait for the Home Office to confirm the U.K.’s post-Brexit immigration policies, he personally had found the NFU’s case for a seasonal workers’ scheme “compelling.”

He also said he didn’t mind not being assigned a “Road to Brexit” speech by the government, insisting Davis and Johnson — “the Messi and Ronaldo of the Cabinet” — were more than equal to the task. Points for charm.

Liam Fox and the nine trade commissioners

Leadership odds

Article 50 day: 66/1

Today: 100/1

In fairness to Liam Fox, his bit in the great Brexit drama — securing all those non-EU free-trade deals — comes after the U.K. has left the European Union, so it’s perhaps not surprising that the international trade secretary has been relatively peripheral to the government’s preparations for EU exit. A leadership challenger in the July 2016 contest, he is now way behind the pack (although so was Rees-Mogg this time last year, so anything is possible).

His was the most low-key address of the day, delivered to an audience of business leaders at the EEF manufacturers’ organization conference in London. He declined to go into detail about the government’s Brexit negotiating plans, but did set out how he sees the U.K.’s free-trading future.

The country’s new trade commissioners, operating in nine regions of the world, will have much more freedom to formulate trade policy and be “free from the constraints of Whitehall,” Fox said.

New officials have recently been appointed in South Asia, China and North America who, along with their counterparts elsewhere in the world, would have “much more autonomy, free from the constraints of Whitehall targets, to do what works best in their region to improve trade," he said.