Like all end games, their length is uncertain until the end is reached. But this government is now spiraling out of control. Markets, the EU, business and the most hard pressed generation since WWII, let down by the most unfair economic model in modern history, are all walking away from a complete shambles of governance. It is not just May, although it is hard to recall a bigger disaster for the Tories than their choice of leader to navigate through Brexit and out of austerity. It is not just Cabinet disunity, although that is on such a scale that it is producing a paralysis of action and an avalanche of waffle.
It is a faltering economy, what the Financial Times calls a bloodbath in the public finances, stalled negotiations with a mishandled Brussels, uncertainty over what sort of Brexit is coming , tens of thousands of families living in temporary accommodation, rising prices and pressure through lack of funding in all public services, including health, education, public housing and social care. Above all there is now the powerful whiff of putrefaction in Whitehall as confusion reigns in one ministry after another and the authority of the government finally rots down in the rising political heat.