Brexiteers, bring out your black suits of mourning. Grieve with private dignity. The quixotic bid for British independence has failed.

There will be no return to full sovereign and democratic self-rule in March 2019, or after the transition, or as far as the political eye can see. Britain will be bound and hemmed until the latent contradictions of such a colonial settlement cause a volcanic national uprising, as they surely must.

The Westminster class is edging crablike towards a double embrace of the EU single market and the customs union, the full EU package but without a veto in the European Council, or Euro-MPs with heft in the dominant blocs of Strasbourg, or judges on the European Court (ECJ) to lean against top-down "Napoleonic" jurisprudence. Both of our great parties are resiling from core manifesto pledges.

Labour has now lurched twice, first towards the customs union and this week calling for “full access to the EU’s single market”. This second step was inevitable once the party chose – for tactical advantage – to fan the flames over the Irish border. Most border checks are linked to the single market not the customs union. If you assert that the Good Friday Accord is in grave jeopardy, you have to accept both in the end and this entails the continued the rule of Euro-judges.