‘She’s like Penelope, unpicking every night what was stitched during the day,” said the senior minister. The dutiful wife of Odysseus waited 20 years for the return of her husband, fending off suitors with a series of cunning ruses. They included delaying the completion of his father’s burial shroud, a task she said she had to finish before choosing one of them.

Brexiteers, by now thoroughly weary of Theresa May’s prevarication, are starting to suspect Britain’s efforts to leave the European Union will last at least as long. They have come to believe they are being relentlessly managed towards a choice of taking whatever the EU deigns to offer, or crashing out of the bloc without agreement. Even the threat of that outcome, and