Like her predecessors, Theresa May is discovering that her party’s preoccupation with Europe will be the issue that in time will come to define her leadership.

Her difficulty - despite being clear that she will deliver Brexit - is that whatever deal she strikes will not satisfy the Euro-sceptic factions within the party and, more widely, supporters and activists out in the shires.

It is worth remembering that in Kent, with the single exception of Tunbridge Wells, every other part of the county voted “out” in the referendum. It may be true blue heartland, but it is Eurosceptic heartland.

Anything less than a decisive break, with unequivocal terms, has the potential to stir up future disquiet among party loyalists, particularly if the totemic issue of immigration is not dealt with.

The problem here is that there can be no real certainty of the outcome for some time to come.

And as previous Conservative leaders have discovered to their cost, MPs find it very difficult to resist the temptation to - as Cameron put it - “bang on” about Europe.

Away from Europe, the Prime Minister’s other key policy pronouncement on grammar schools has delighted many Conservatives.

Whether there is a rush to build a new generation of selective schools remains to be seen. The Green Paper suggests the terms and conditions may do as much to dissuade existing schools and would-be providers of new ones as encourage them.

The PM needs a quick buy-in but is unlikely to get it.

When he was education secretary, Michael Gove faced a similar problem with his academy programme but engineered a clever solution - he cleared the way for schools rated as outstanding to become academies automatically.

The PM needs a similar fix.

You can't really draw any definitive conclusions from a minor council by-election but in a small way, the result of the fight for Strood South in Medway told us a little about where the main parties stand.

That UKIP failed to defend the seat is arguably the least surprising outcome as the party’s contortions over the leadership and direction grow increasingly acrimonious.

You might argue that actually, the party didn’t fare too badly given the generally chaotic backdrop, infighting and alleged altercations.

Its share of the vote was certainly down but not so much that the prognosis of Steven Woolfe that UKIP is in a death spiral was given more credence.

But there is no doubt the party is in flux and the loyalty of its supporters will be seriously tested if it fails to re-organise quickly and establish some kind of policy platform. If it doesn’t then the downward slide will accelerate.

For the time being, you get the sense that the Conservative government’s prevarication over Brexit and the Labour party’s unchanged view of immigration are shoring up its support.

For the Conservatives, despite the Brexit haggling, the party actually achieved a reasonable margin of victory - albeit on a diabolically low turnout of 16%.

As to Labour, which had campaigned on the basis that the by-election was a two-way fight between it and the Conservatives, there will be some relief that it came a solid second.

But that in itself is a measure of its relatively modest ambitions.

Perhaps the only real conclusion is that tackling voter apathy and indifference remains the biggest challenge facing politicians of all parties.