We are in the land where time has stood still. Theresa May, after the most hectic of schedules, is taking an Easter break, a walking holiday in Snowdonia. Two years ago she did exactly the same thing and, on returning, announced that she was calling a general election, a decision that then made her difficult job infinitely harder. In those two years the reputation of parliament and the Tory party has sunk and the search for a Brexit compromise has become the irreconcilable in pursuit of the unachievable.

The prime minister is talking to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party but has a better chance of scaling Snowdon’s trickiest ascents than breaking the Brexit impasse. Her withdrawal agreement — if not the “game, set and match” claimed