As Building went to press, the prime minister was holding a crisis meeting with her reshuffled Cabinet in a desperate attempt to unite her top team after the resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis. Most political pundits are predicting her administration will survive, but the bookies have slashed the odds of a 2018 election to 6/4 with the chances of a Conservative leadership contest at 1/2.

Ever since the EU referendum result political instability in the UK has been the new normal, but this week has perhaps been one of the most dramatic and unsettling, and it’s not something the business community wants to get used to. Some may be relieved to see the back of the former foreign secretary who infamously dismissed concerns about how companies would continue to trade after Brexit with the words “fuck business”. Similarly Davis’ opposition to the prime minister’s Chequers plan as a “compromise too far” will be seen by many as confirmation that he has never accepted the economic risks of a hard Brexit. But politics is fast, furious and impossible to predict: who knows if Johnson and Davis will be back in the ascendency pushing the hardline Brexiteers’ agenda from positions of power once more? (Johnson’s “Brexit dream” may be dying but his own reveries of power are still very much alive.)

Brexit trumps all political priorities, even one as electorally important as housing

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