Brexit Secretary David Davis is not clearing his desk, according to Robin Walker, Worcester’s MP and number three at Mr Davis’ Department for Exiting the EU.

Following the somewhat forced resignation of First Secretary of State Damian Green yesterday, much has been made of Mr Davis’ apparent threat made a couple of weeks back to resign if Mr Green was fired over allegations that inappropriate adult material was found on his House of Commons computer in 2008.

But Mr Davis is still in post: Mr Walker said: “He actually said that he would resign if Damian Green was sacked without due process and I think it’s clear that there has been a proper process through all this.”

The official line from Number 10 is that Prime Minister Theresa May asked Mr Green, commonly seen as her de facto deputy PM, to resign because she felt he had misled both the public and parliament.

A Cabinet Office investigation said he had been untruthful when he said last month that police had never told him the found material on his computer after a raid of his office following a series of leaks.

With the departure of the third senior cabinet member in two months, following the resignation of Michael Fallon, Defence Secretary and Priti Patel from International Development in November, Mr Walker said it had been a difficult few months for the government but denied he was eyeing up the top job.

Laughing, he said: “Number 10 is not part of my plan at all.

“Damian Green is a loss to the government, and the country - he was a very effective operator who was very well respected on all sided.

“and it has been a difficult few months for the government - it’s never easy governing when you don’t have a majority. But we’ve just got the Brexit bill through its committee stage and while we suffered one defeat on that, we had 42 victories.

“Jeremy Corbyn said he’d be in Downing Street by Christmas and that’s certainly not the case. We’ve not had to withdraw bills and the average majority in the house has been 22.”

Mr Walker even made a possibly-unconscious reference to Theresa May’s not so successful ‘strong and stable’ election slogan when he said: “Theresa May is very resilient but the government will come back stronger in the New Year and offer confidence and stability as we steer the bill through Parliament.”