Having last week announced his intention to leave Parliament after 34 years, former cabinet minister Peter Lilley used his final Prime Minister’s Questions to wish Theresa May “Godspeed”.

The MP for Hitchen and Harpenden also asked his party leader if she still recognised, when it came to the UK’s Article 50 negotiations, “that to get a reasonable deal we must accept that no deal is better than a bad deal”?

May famously used this phrase in her pivotal Lancaster House speech on Brexit in January. In contrast to her predecessor, who foolishly declared up front his support for Remain in last summer’s referendum on European Union membership, whatever the outcome of his “renegotiation”, May took a much tougher line.

Last week, though, faced with Lilley’s typically astute question, the Prime Minister conspicuously avoided the “no deal” construction. One reason is that, ahead of June 8, the Tories are claiming a Labour government would oversee a “chaotic Brexit”. That’s a harder sell if May, too, is emphasising an outcome that, to much of the public, seems scary.