The Downing Street aide sucked on a straw, sitting at the table of a juice bar a few hundred yards from No 10. “I’ve often joked with my mum, when things look bad, that I might be out of a job by the end of the week,” the official said. “I’ve never meant it before this week. We’ve run out of puff.”

The prime minister’s team is reeling from three defeats in the Commons last Tuesday when the Tories became the first government to be declared in contempt of parliament for refusing to publish the legal advice on the Brexit deal.

Despite the prime minister meeting MPs face to face, those opposed to her deal appear determined to vote against her in the crunch vote…