Like any serious Foreign Secretary, we’re sure that Boris Johnson chooses his words carefully. So when he was asked by a fellow Tory MP in parliament yesterday to make it “clear to the EU” that if they wanted a “penny piece more” from Britain as the price for leaving, they could “go whistle”, Mr Johnson must have known that his reply would have raised eyebrows. Our Foreign Secretary said his colleague was making a “very valid point” and that to “go whistle” was “an entirely appropriate” response to European demands for British money.

This at least has the virtue of consistency. The idea that Britain isn’t going to pay a penny to leave the EU is the position that leading Brexiteers such as Mr Johnson have taken since before the referendum. Indeed, they promised that far from costing the country money, leaving the EU would — famously — bring a bonus of £350 million a week which could be spent on the NHS.

However, in the year since the referendum it has become clear to most that there will in fact be a hefty price tag associated with leaving the EU. In part this is to cover the liabilities that Britain has incurred as a result of its long-standing membership — everything from Commission officials’s pensions to payments for already agreed projects like new roads in poorer member states. There are also the future on-going payments Europe is likely to extract from us, which our government will dress up as a voluntary gift in solidarity with our friends in eastern Europe but which will in practice be a price we pay for partial access to the single market we currently belong to.

The other member states have collectively agreed that until there is satisfactory progress on the resolution of this entire bill, they are not prepared to move on to the discussion we urgently need to have: namely, what is the new trade deal between Britain and the EU going to look like, and how are we going to make the transition to it.

Earlier this year, senior members of the Government such as David Davis were promising to fight all through the summer against this attempt by Europe to stack the negotiating timetable in their favour. Now Mr Davis, if not, it seems, the Foreign Secretary, has accepted the reality of the situation: Europe holds most of the cards in this negotiation, and they’re going to make us play our one ace — the money — before they are forced to play theirs: access and transition.

There will still be a row about the exact sums. Downing Street is trying to manage expectations by saying that we definitely won’t pay anything like the €100 billion they claim the EU is demanding. They’re right — but that’s because the EU isn’t expecting to get €100 billion. Something like €30 or €40 billion is where, privately, the Government thinks we’re going to end up. It is still a huge sum for taxpayers to pay for the privilege of inflicting on ourselves the self-harming act of leaving the EU.

When Mr Davis was asked yesterday what Boris Johnson meant when he said Europe could “go whistle”, he told us “bluntly, I wouldn’t worry” what the Foreign Secretary says. It is not clear that the 17 million Leave voters who were led to believe the money would be flowing in the other direction will be quite so dismissive. For in the case of Brexit it turns out that he who pays the piper doesn’t call the tune.

Wimbledon code

It used to be that Wimbledon was a metaphor for the British condition: this was forever the nation that played host to a gripping tournament but always failed to win. All that has changed, with Johanna Konta in the women’s semi-finals and Andy Murray last year’s men’s champion. We’ll have to find a new metaphor.