A month ago, EU leaders offered the UK a six-month extension of Article 50 after a debate that lasted into the small hours of the morning. Theresa May mercifully had no choice but to accept: yet she arrived back at No 10 with a deal that still appears unpassable, despite ongoing cross-party talks with Jeremy Corbyn.

After the Easter break and local elections that proved fairly disastrous for both main parties, it remains potentially awkward for either side to end these talks, even though they seem to be going nowhere. The country is not far from entering a new Groundhog Brexit phase, with the start of each new day, week, or month marked by Theresa May scrambling journalists outside Downing Street to let them know she is “getting on with the job at hand”.