The reason Mrs May held an election that the polls predicted she would win comfortably was to avoid the mess she now finds herself in. Without a majority, she is constantly vulnerable to parliamentary ambush. So the other answer to Ms Soubry’s question – who is running Britain? – is whoever can win the votes in the Commons.

Ms Soubry said the Government was at the mercy of Jacob Rees-Mogg and his band of Jacobin Tories in the European Research Group. “These people... want their version of Brexit,” she said. But exactly the same can be said of her and the group of Mutineer Remainers. It appears that no-one is capable of seeing themselves as others see them.

The Government is no longer the master of its own destiny, though – as it showed last night – defeating it is a hard task, even when it has no overall majority. It is kept in place by the flying buttresses of Brexit, forces that prop up an edifice that by all laws of physics should be a pile of rubble.

Now, the denouement of the great Brexit drama is being fought out, as it was always going to be, in Parliament, though few imagined that the battle would be waged with the Government rendered almost powerless. It may have won last night’s big vote on the customs union, but is there a majority for her Chequers deal, assuming the EU even goes along with it?