One of the more alarming developments in recent weeks is the way in which the case for leaving the European Union with no deal and trading on World Trade Organisation terms has moved from the wildest periphery of the increasingly poisonous Brexit debate to the mainstream. In the early days after the referendum, a hard Brexit was defined as quitting the bloc’s customs union and single market in favour of a Canada-style free-trade agreement. Somewhere along the way, a hard Brexit has come to mean leaving with no free-trade deal at all. Boris Johnson now claims that a complete rupture with our largest trading partner is, in fact, closest to what Leave voters wanted all along.

This is obviously nonsense since no one advocated this