Those in government watching Theresa May battle towards a Brexit deal have taken to quoting the words of “Deep Throat”, the secret source in All the President’s Men, about the orchestrator of the Watergate burglary, G Gordon Liddy, who could hold his hand in an open flame until his flesh seared. “What’s the trick?” Liddy replied: “The trick is not minding.”

This weekend, the prime minister’s resilience as the flames have licked at her leadership seems, finally, to be paying off. Ministers, their aides, civil servants and European Union officials are all signalling that the outline of a deal, which might satisfy enough MPs to pass parliament, is there to be done — if May has the courage to grasp it and her cabinet and