As Theresa May contemplates her fate this weekend it will give her scant comfort to know she is not the first Tory leader to have been destroyed by Europe.
David Cameron, John Major and Margaret Thatcher before her all suffered the same fate, as the Tory party’s obsession with Brussels picked them off one by one.
Mr Cameron, at least, told his party to “stop banging on about Europe”, but then unleashed a referendum he was sure his own side would win.
Her successor will inherit the whole unresolved Brexit mess.
Much as Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt, or whoever ends up as PM, may like to think they have the negotiating skills May lacked, they don’t.
Skip forward a few months and they will realise that all the constraints faced by Mrs May exist for them too.
But expectations, and frustrations, will have grown.
As Mrs May has learned: uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
