The problem is Theresa May. Not her policies. Not her Withdrawal Agreement. Her. Ask people who knocked on doors at the recent council elections, and they will all tell you the same thing. Unless the Conservatives switch leaders now, they face obliteration.

The PM, naturally, doesn’t share this analysis. She should, after all, have stepped aside several times already according to all the usual conventions, but she seems genuinely not to recognise the rules by which everyone else plays. By every precedent and norm, she should have gone after losing her majority in 2017. She should have gone when the ministers carrying out her Brexit policy resigned. She should have gone when she suffered the worst Commons defeat in 750 years of parliamentary history. But, inert and monotonous, she trudges on.

Like every Tory canvasser, I could see a disaster coming. But I had no idea it would be this bad. There had been talk of 500 losses, even 800 – though this latter figure was offered more in a spirit of expectation management than of forecasting. In the event, 1300 councillors lost their seats despite, in most cases, having run frugal and efficient local authorities

A couple of days before the vote, in a slightly whimsical spirit, I wrote the following: “I have a horrible vision of the Prime Minister responding to the defeat by making one of those statements at her lectern. ‘I have listened. I have heard what people want. And what people are asking for, up and down the country, is for Parliament to pass my Withdrawal Agreement…’”