‘She will decide’

David Lidington is the most powerful minister you’ve never heard of. He is Theresa May’s de facto deputy, tasked with both supervising the domestic agenda and solving the trickiest Brexit conundrums. Much of government business is, nowadays, done through committees of cabinet members: he chairs seven such committees and sits on another 20. ‘I am the man who stands on the stage spinning plates on the top of poles,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Every now and then the PM gives me another plate and I have to keep that going as well.’ That’s hardly a metaphor that inspires much confidence in the running of the government, but everybody will know what he means.

Lidington was Europe minister under David Cameron and a committed Remainer in the referendum. Now he has been tasked with preparing for a no-deal Brexit, the Prime Minister’s new Plan B. The meetings he chairs, he says, underline why there need not be chaos on the UK side of the border.