Robert Courts, Cameron’s successor, is the latest Conservative MP to resign over Brexit

Is the Witney MP’s decision a one-off, or part of a co-ordinated plan – with more to come? Downing Street and the Whips will be searching for an answer.

Iain Dale: A betrayal, a contortion, a rash, a shambles, a schism, a squabble. What’s the best collective noun for Cabinet ministers?

And: One Greg Clark. Two Vince Cables. Eleven Germans going home. 100,000 Remain protesters. 17 million Leave voters. Plus: Meanwhile, Javid gets on with his job.

“When each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground”

May’s appeal next week at Chequers will be founded in grinding detail, not Churchillian rhetoric. Key to agreement will be taking Ministers with her and springing no untoward surprises.

The prosecco warms up

The combination of crucial Brexit votes, crumbling ministerial discipline, growing grassroots discontent and a rail crisis serves to intensify pressure on Downing Street.

Alex Morton: Don’t review spending before first reviewing government – and how it doesn’t work

Its failures begins with the machinery of Government – the core civil service itself. This must be fixed.

A lesson from Wednesday evening in the Commons. May might win a Customs Union vote after all.

So much of the Government’s strategy is predicated on the belief that this is impossible. But what if that’s wrong?

Staying in the Customs Union until 2022. The pluses. The minuses.

Speculation about pressure on Williamson, or calculation about Cabinet numbers, misses a key point: May must keep Davis and Fox onside.

James Frayne: The Home Office is famously hard to run, but Rudd might have survived had she had a better grip on it

In my experience of departmental life, it will take at least six months before we can judge Javid’s management.

Rob Wilson: How government must change to deliver real social reform

It is too fragmented to deliver this successfully – so a senior Cabinet minister should be tasked with bringing about change.

James Gray: Syria – and why May should act without a Commons vote

Parliament’s job should be to hold the Prime Minister and Executive to account for what they have to do, rather than becoming a party to it.

James Frayne: May needs more brains in Whitehall as well as boots on the ground to make Brexit work

Here are just a few of the ways that I have seen work and that government should be adopting more broadly.

Last June’s election has transformed the debate about capitalism. May must find a strategic response.

Tactical newspaper articles are necessary but insufficient. She should make a series of speeches to set out her stall and try to change the weather.

Carillion. Don’t say that Jesse Norman didn’t warn us (in a manner of speaking)

That the company is a government customer isn’t the whole story. After all, few customers must manage the consequences of their supplier’s collapse.

Adam Holloway: This affirmative action reshuffle was wrong. Why not just appoint the best person to the job?

Many ministers are indeed well-suited – but it feels as if this is a secondary consideration: just check their CVs, and ask if we might sometimes choose better.

Robert Halfon: The Conservative Party must regain the territory of social justice

That doesn’t just mean talking about it – it means putting it into practice both in Government and in how we run our own Party operations.