In the freedom she has won through sheer persistence, the prime minister’s thoughts should now turn to resignation. Her premiership has been dominated by discussion of her day of departure but she has won the precious right to announce her own farewell. If Mrs May gets her timing right she need not be the fag-end Cameron-years prime minister, in the way that Gordon Brown will always be the fag-end Blair-years prime minister.

Power is gloriously seductive and hard to relinquish. The chief is almost always dragged out. Of the postwar prime ministers Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, Alec Douglas-Home, Ted Heath, John Major and Gordon Brown were all forced out by the electorate. Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan retired through convenient illnesses that were pretexts amid