You can look at it two ways. After ten years of inertia, Bank rate has doubled. Or: after 10 years of inertia, Bank rate has been raised by one quarter of one per cent, to half of one per cent. Big deal!

Of course, for most businesses and individuals, the official rate is meaningless. It is the rate to which everything else is geared, but everything else is usually a lot higher than 0.25% or 0.5%. We read reports daily of how so many desperate borrowers find themselves struggling to pay the usurious interest rates associated with credit card debt.

Personally, had I been a member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, I should not have voted for an increase at this juncture. The combination of austerity and the impact of the referendum-induced 15% devaluation of the pound is having a manifest impact on real incomes and retailing. The recent CBI news on the trend of retail sales was, well, terrible.

I agree with Governor Carney and the colleagues who do not like to be out of step with him that official rates look absurdly low by historical standards. In an ideal world, they should be “normalised”. But we are where we are: a British economy which, unlike many others, is in the doldrums and which – as the governor, to his credit, repeatedly points out – is heading from the doldrums into stormy waters if Brexit goes ahead.

Monetary policy has, these last 10 years, been aimed at trying to counteract the deleterious impact of a seriously misconceived policy of austerity, which has had the effect of not only damaging so many people’s living standards but also dampening confidence and the investment that would help to boost productivity. And now the prospect of Brexit!

Michael Bloomberg, with, perhaps, a touch of hyperbole, recently described Brexit as “the single stupidest thing any country has ever done”. He later added: “I did say that I thought it was the single stupidest thing any country has ever done, but then we [the Americans] Trumped it.”

It has become a commonplace for people to say: “At least the Americans can get rid of Trump in four years’ time, whereas the damage from Brexit will be long-lasting.”

The case for reversing the referendum decision becomes more and more obvious as the problems mount. It is increasingly clear that the government is in the process of disintegration. One of the former Remainer Theresa May’s many mistakes was to place herself at the mercy of the a small core of Brexit ideologues, nearly all of whom think they are doing the work that their great heroine Margaret Thatcher would have done.

It was therefore an important contribution to the debate when Sir Charles Powell, the Foreign Office civil servant who could read the former prime minister’s mind as well as anyone, gave a lecture recently on “Margaret Thatcher and Europe”.

Powell worked directly for Thatcher from 1983 to 1991, and remained in touch with her thereafter. As he said: “I attended every European meeting, and every bilateral meeting with European leaders, that she held.”

For a start, she would not have held a referendum. In common with her great predecessor Clement Attlee, she regarded them as instruments of dictators, popular with Hitler and Mussolini. A lawyer herself, she had no problems with the role of the European court of justice, the institution with which Brexiters who go on about “sovereignty” are so obsessed.

Powell referred to her famous Bruges speech of 1988. That speech has been misrepresented as “the Eurosceptic charter”. The key passage conveniently overlooked by Eurosceptics reads as follows: “Britain does not dream of some cosy isolated existence on the fringes of the European community. Our destiny is in Europe as part of the community … I want to see us work more closely on the things we can do better together than alone.”

Of course she did not want us to become part of a superstate. But the uncomfortable truth for the disingenuous extreme-right Eurosceptics who seem to have entrapped May with their hard-Brexit propaganda is that there is no reason that, by remaining in the EU, we should become part of a superstate. Thatcher, her successor John Major, followed by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, fought their corner on our behalf. They succeeded in getting almost everything we needed out of the EU, and eschewing the parts we didn’t want to reach us, such as the eurozone and the Schengen treaty.

As Powell said: “Margaret Thatcher’s thinking moved ever more on to the models and formulae for keeping Britain in the European community without our being full participants – variable-geometry Europe, inner and outer circles, opt-outs, a bespoke membership, and the like.”

This is what we have, and this arrangement is what the others are happy with. The idea that unless we leave we will lose our identity is a pernicious lie. As for these wild accusations that we Remainers should be considered “traitors” – they smack of panic in the ranks of Brexiters, who may be beginning to realise that they are being found out. It is not we who are the traitors: it is the extreme Brexiters who are intent on selling this country down the river.