Meanwhile ...

At the lunchtime press conference today there were signs that the Brexit talk deadline is now the end of September. This sounds likely to me: the EU was saying any deal needed to be agreed in principle by October, to give enough time for the countries and EU Parliament to sign it off - and we have of course had threats not to do so if the individual countries did not agree. We have also been told the Brexit negotiator David Frost will move from that role to national security adviser when Mark Sedwill departs in September.

Of course, that only gives three months to get all the deal/no-deal preparation in place, for government and business, but that would be typical of the level of preparation we expect from this government.