THERESA May might have been at the other end of the planet this week, announcing £9 billion-worth of trade deals, hailing a “golden era” with China and taking tea with President Xi but the Brexit albatross was still visible around her neck.
The leak of a draft, incomplete Whitehall analysis pointing to a post Brexit slump whatever path was taken was bad enough, giving Remainers a “we-told-you-so” moment.
But then, having made clear it would be “wrong” to release the analysis, the Prime Minister had to promise to do just that because Labour threatened to push the matter to a Commons vote and the Tories would have lost.
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Yet the Scottish Government made clear that when it got its hands on the data, it would make it public, arguing voters had a right to know about the full impact of Brexit. No 10 fired off a warning to Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues, urging them against doing something that would harm the UK’s “national interest”.
But as “Auntie May” visited the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, there was more stormy weather.
Phillip Lee, the Justice Minister, alarmed by the numbers in the draft release, tweeted that if they were “anywhere near right,” then the PM should rethink Brexit. "Evidence, not dogma" should dictate the Government's approach to Brexit, he insisted.
Within hours Mr Lee was being given a dressing-down by the Whips Office, not so much for saying what he had said, although that was bad enough, but because he had said it in public.
Then there was Steve Baker, the arch-Brexiteer, now a minister in David Davis’s department. Having alienated the entire civil service by suggesting Whitehall economic analyses were “always wrong,” he then appeared to give credence to a tale by his fellow Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg that a fifth column of pro-EU Whitehall officials were secretly plotting Britain’s soft withdrawal from the EU.
Downing St at first stood by their minister but when an audio tape confirmed Mr Baker’s impression of the Rees-Mogg tale was inaccurate, it back-tracked and ordered the Minister to make a Commons apology or lose his job.
As Liam Fox, the Trade Secretary, and others sought to rally round their beleaguered leader, more siren Conservative voices were keeping up the pressure with the right-wing Spectator magazine, urging the PM to “lead or go”.
One Tory MP suggested Mrs May could “do a John Major” ie resign and urge colleagues to “put up or shut up”. Back in the mid-1990s, the then PM saw off his detractors and continued to lead his divided party albeit to a whopping defeat at the 1997 General Election.
But such is the rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights weakness of Mrs May, she cannot even do that.
She is leading a party that is ununifiable on Europe and a nation split down the middle on which way to go.
While an array of Conservative characters issue warnings, Labour revels in Tory misfortune.
Jon Trickett, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, last night attacked the “floundering” PM and was able to quote back Conservatives’ criticisms, saying: “For once, Tory MPs put it best: under Theresa May we've a timid and stalled government and the country is crying out for an alternative."
Perhaps it will be the thought of that Corbyn, socialist alternative that pulls the Conservative ship away from the rocks in the next few weeks.
Yet the way ahead for the Tory Party and indeed the country has never looked more uncertain as we move through the raging Brexit storm.
Europe, of course, did for Thatcher, Major and Cameron and it will do for May too. The only question now is: when?