According to the Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, there are five stages of grief. They are – in chronological order – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. If there is a reason why the last three years in British public life have been not just so tumultuous but so vicious, it is down to the simple fact that a portion of this country has not yet progressed to that final stage. Indeed, they seem nowhere near it.

As a Leave voter I don’t blame them for the feeling of grief. I simply think they should have got over it. I had a tiny portion of the experience myself more than three years ago as I watched the early referendum results come in from Gibraltar and elsewhere. “Oh well,” I thought, as I ran a bath, “That’s a shame.”

I was slightly glum that night. Morose even, as I prepared for an early bed. But at no point during those brief hours did I descend into a speckle-flecked rage. At no stage did it occur to me that I should call for the referendum to be recast or declared invalid. I did not start choosing to pretend that it was not clear what we had been voting for. Nor did I start to prepare a cull of my friends, cleansing from view all those who had voted Remain.

I did not start pretending that half of the country were racists or otherwise bigoted. The spectre of Russian bots did not dance around my retinas. The only thing I thought was: “Well, perhaps we’ll get another vote in another 40 years.” In the meantime, I remember thinking very clearly, we should probably make the best job we can of this.

Of course, as the referendum night progressed, the results went the way I had voted but not expected. And I suppose that it is in the nature of political upsets that those who were most certain about the direction of travel of a country (indeed, of the world) are thrown most violently when the world pulls one of its surprises.