A perfect storm is approaching Theresa May’s Conservative Party. There is no law that political parties must last forever. Today, the dark clouds that are swirling above Britain’s most successful party are visible to all; the government’s disastrous handling of Brexit; a Cabinet that is deeply split; a parliamentary party that has fractured; a Conservative electorate and membership that are at logger-heads with their leaders; a rebooted and well-funded populist Right under a re-energised Nigel Farage; and a fundamentally damaged Conservative brand. At no other point in Britain’s post-war period has the Conservative Party looked so vulnerable.

To make matters worse, two decisions that were taken in the past week have added to this looming storm. Theresa May’s decision to invite Jeremy Corbyn into the heart of the Brexit negotiations sits uneasily with the fact that most Conservatives loathe all that Corbyn represents. The super-soft “Mr Whippy” vision of Brexit that Labour advocates is, in the eyes of most Conservative voters, indistinguishable from remaining in the EU. The promise of Brexit, of forging a radical new settlement, now risks being diluted into a weaker version of the status quo.

Meanwhile, the polls show that an overwhelming majority of Conservative voters back the one thing that this week MPs decided to rule-out: a no-deal Brexit. If the Conservative leadership had no serious intention of preparing for no deal then it should have said so at the outset. Instead, the Prime Minister and her advisers have pursued an approach that will now be used in university courses on international relations as a textbook case of how not to negotiate.