In terms of Brexit, this has not been a good week for Theresa May. Assailed on all sides - and from within her own party - she is about to make a keynote speech tomorrow as the stakes on leaving the EU are raised yet again.
Jeremy Corbyn got the week off to a bad start, from her perspective, when he shifted Labour towards support for a customs union, opening the way for a government defeat in the Commons by opposition parties and Tory rebels.
Then her foreign secretary Boris Johnson - who is clearly positioning himself for a leadership challenge - made a number of interventions on the Irish border issue.
These ranged from the ridiculous - drawing a comparison between the border and the monitoring of congestion charges in London borough - to the more serious, suggesting in a leaked memo that a hard border remains a possibility.
Yesterday also saw an impassioned speech by former Tory prime minister John Major calling on Mrs May to stand up to the ultra Brexiteers in the party. He said many voters had been misled during the referendum and urged a free vote among MPs on a final Brexit deal with the option of a second referendum.
All this has cranked matters up but the most significant development of the week is undoubtedly the publication of the EU's draft Brexit withdrawal agreement which has drawn a firm battle line between Mrs May and Michel Barnier.
The proposal on keeping Northern Ireland in a 'common regulatory area' after Brexit angered the DUP and led to a firm rejection from Mrs May who said it would 'threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK.'
The British government and their DUP allies may be furious about all this but it should hardly come as a surprise given the implications of the December agreement.
What it does is put the onus back on Britain to come up with an alternative solution that prevents a hard border.
