Summer is here, and Brits getting ready for a holiday in the Med are thinking of what to pack. Along with flip-flops and Ambre Solaire, the well-prepared traveller will make sure they’ve got their Brexit patter in slick working order, because it’s dead certain that after three bottles of Mythos lager with a friendly family from Denmark in a taverna the dread question will arrive from Birgit and Sven: “Why are you guys Leaving us?”

Remainers can groan and move onto the ouzo. Battle-hardened Brexiteers may relish the chance to air ideas with a fresh audience. There may be common ground around the democratic deficit, the foolishness of the common agricultural policy, and an attitude to cash so frivolous an Italian farm got EU funding for a monorail to travel around the olive groves.

A productive tactic is to flip the argument. It’s not the UK that’s leaving, per se. The mainstream Leaver view is to retain the same terms of free trade, with a couple of tweaks. Rather it’s the European Union that is accelerating away as it embarks on a journey of ever closer integration.