Theresa May has something to celebrate this week: she’s survived as far as parliament’s half-term break without calamity. She ended January under threat from both wings of her party. But the angry throng has gone home for now. February has been kind to the prime minister so far.

The flipside to exasperated Tories on both sides of the great Brexit divide is that each camp may still think that May is preferable to the alternative. If she emphasises that the UK will be out of the single market and the customs union, she appeases hard Brexiteers. If she refuses to say how she would vote in a second referendum then at least she comforts pro-Europeans that she’s better than Boris, Jacob or Michael.

The experienced