The UK is surely not blameless. The hardening rhetoric from the Brexiteers on the customs union, the dithering in Cabinet over trade terms (“pure illusion”, says Donald Tusk) and the recent questioning of the Good Friday Agreement itself by leading Brexiteers, have surely spurred Europe on.

But Europe has played its part too. It has failed utterly to recognise the uniqueness of the Ireland situation, which long predates the rules of its single market. This is not a techno-legal question but rather an 800-year-old identity issue - with guns - that now risks breaking up the United Kingdom.

In place of artful compromise, we now see a high-stakes game of arm-twisting. After Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to commit Labour to membership of a Customs Union, pressure will now undoubtedly grow on Mrs May to follow suit.

Such a move would be a significant step in solving the Irish issue and this might, come October, be the net result of the EU’s uncompromising approach. But even this, given the apparent breadth and depth of the EU’s definitions of ‘full alignment’ on Ireland, may not be sufficient.

Ireland was always the ‘unanswerable’ question thrown up by Brexit; it was always going to need the most deft handling if the Good Friday Agreement - which has ambiguity over identity at its very core - was to be preserved. Now it seems to be getting the bulldozer treatment.