You may have a bucket of sawdust or a barrel of the stuff, but if there’s a rock in the sawdust then when you sift you will surely end up with the rock. No amount of sawdust can magic it away. However long the sifting takes, whatever volume of sawdust must first be displaced, there’s no escaping the hard object.

Logic is like that rock. If A necessitates B then starting from A you can pursue your ideas in as many directions as you choose, but you will always reach B. “A” was the decision to head for the European Union exit. “B” is the choice we have to make when we get there. The choice, as I shall explain, is between a hard Brexit,