18:20

Little known fact about Theresa May; she has an exceptionally good memory. She can “read a full statement and repeat it almost verbatim”, Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh write in their definitive account of the 2017 general election. “As one of her team noted: ‘She reads it through once, it’s an almost photographic memory. And I mean word-for-word, not paraphrasing.’”

You saw that in action today. There were at least two lines that May used in her answers that sounded pre-scripted, and that she used twice. First, there was: “Am I going to see this through? Yes.” And then there was the spiel how she would be doing her job (negotiating a Brexit deal) and that after that it would be up to MPs to do their job (pass the wretched thing).

As news lines, these don’t really take us us very far. The first is little more than a slogan, although at least it quashes, for the moment, any speculation that May is going to stand down. The second sheds a bit more light on the strategy she might use to get her deal through parliament; MPs will be told it is their national duty to approve the deal, with the implication that if they vote it down, they will be held responsible for the catastrophe that will follow.

What is curious about May, and probably a huge weakness, is her reluctance to take on the arguments of her opponents. She made a modest attempt to explain the need in the Brexit process to accept difficult compromises. But on a day when her Brexiter opponents have been dominating the airwaves, she made no attempt to berate them for the multiple fake promises they made during the EU referendum campaign, despite being given an open invitation to do so. (See 5.35pm.) You can’t win an argument unless you’re willing to tell your opponents they’re wrong. But she won’t. It is as if somehow she has internalised the Brexiter mindset.

What rescued the press conference was her Geoffrey Boycott answer to the final question, which she delivered so well that it could have been staged (although I don’t think it was.) (See 5.52pm.) It made for polished TV, and was about as good a clip as May has ever delivered. But it is still just a slogan. To get Brexit through the Commons, she will need a lot more than that.

That’s all from me for today.

My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is now taking over.