Inside No 10 a split and bruised government is divided over how to escape the quagmire it has marched into. By now Boris Johnson and his team had intended to be in the middle of an election campaign, giving him a new mandate for Brexit. Their mismanagement of parliament, party and the public has stymied all that. The government has only six weeks left before its own deadline to leave the EU, do or die. It is struggling not to die.

“They are riven,” says a senior Tory. “There are two schools of thought competing in No 10. The first faction is determined to double down on every legal and political trick, however constitutionally questionable. The second thinks the game is up, and they have