In the House of Commons, it was clear Theresa May will go on to the end, whatever the cost may be

Her government has all but fallen apart, but Theresa May has had worse days than this. For stoicism, she breaks all records

Let’s start with a quick recap shall we? On Friday, two years after the vote to leave the European Union, fifteen months after triggering Article 50, a year after the Prime Minister lost her majority in a needless general election, a cabinet that had already lost its Home Secretary, Defence Secretary, Education Secretary, International Development Secretary and de facto Deputy Prime Minister finally agreed a negotiating position on Brexit that will be be rejected by the EU anyway but has detonated the government all the same.

At 3.30pm, Theresa May came to the despatch box as planned to give a statement on the “Chequers summit.” Fourteen hours earlier her Brexit Secretary had resigned, and hour earlier her Foreign Secretary had followed suit. It was not clear exactly what she could say. A rousing chorus of “It’s coming home,” perhaps?

But she began by paying tribute to Dawn Sturgess, the Salisbury woman whose death on Sunday night is now the subject of a murder investigation in which the prime suspect is the Russian state. Earlier, she’d led an emergency meeting on the matter which her Foreign Secretary hadn’t bothered to turn up to. He also hadn’t bothered to turn up the London Western Balkans Summit he was meant to be hosting, leaving his guests, European leaders, twiddling their thumbs. Then he’d quit his job.

It must be said that the Prime Minister put in a fairly incredible performance. Before rising to the despatch box, she had sat on the front bench wearing the look of a ghost at their own funeral. But she was unshakeable to the last. She thanks Boris Johnson and David Davis for their contributions to government, and rode out the jeers that followed. She spelled out how the position reached at Chequers was the only way to prevent a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland and for Britain to have its own independent trade policy after leaving the EU.

For stoicism, Theresa May breaks all records. It is hard to believe but she has had much worse days than this. That exit poll last June. The party conference speech in which she took delivery of a P45 from a TV prankster, lost her voice but carried on speaking for forty minutes, before the set fell apart around her.

That she had lost from her government a man who has in the last two years done little more than advertise his utter unsuitability to the task of negotiating Brexit, and another who has simply behaved like a degenerate, may perhaps not even be the greatest cause for concern.

She will, as someone once said at that despatch box before her, go on to the end, whatever the cost may be.

Others of Boris Johnson and David Davis’s persuasion, who are determined to force the government into taking up a hard Brexit position, even though there remains no majority in parliament to vote it through, have already signalled their intentions.

They will resign, one after the other, either until the Chequers position is dropped or Theresa May is finished. But what then? A Conservative leadership election would take many weeks, and only a general election changes the parliamentary arithmetic, which, after the last time, surely no leader would dare risk. And even a general election might not change the balance of MPs prepared to vote through a hard Brexit.

In the meantime, Ms May will just roll on, replace her ministers and judder towards Brexit’s finish line. There is a feeling, now, that nothing can stop her.