This fits a trend. Brazil is keen to start talks with Britain, as are Australia and Turkey. They might be bemused at the political mess in Westminster but they seek closer links to our economy, the fifth largest in the world.

We have a newly competitive currency, fuelling demand for our goods and helping employment to an all-time high. There’s even a consensus about what Brexit should look like: a clean break with the EU, untying our hands to strike new alliances. The journey is bumpy, but the direction is clear.

So it’s hard to portray Brexit as being an unmitigated disaster. But a great many people are doing a rather good job of it.

Their mistake is to look at the state of the Government and assume that the Brexit project is in the same dilapidated condition.

Negotiations with the EU, which finished their second stage yesterday, were always going to be tortuous. Made more so, it’s true, by the implosion of the Prime Minister’s authority and the inability of anyone to make the case for Brexit. When critics carp, the Government is unable to respond.

Given the scale of this task, Theresa May ought to have assembled a Bletchley Park-style cadre of experts to work out every detail. Instead, the Government has relied on a still‑traumatised Whitehall machine.

I recently met one of the many civil servants deployed to Brexit and asked what it was, exactly, that he did. “I don’t know,” he replied, “that hasn’t been made clear to me yet.” The basic problem is that leadership has to come from the very top. And it’s not being applied.

Yet in spite of all this, public opinion remains remarkably firm – perhaps because, political tragicomedy aside, things have been going rather well.

The country is as evenly split now as it was in last year’s referendum, with Brexit just about edging it. Which is perhaps understandable, given how many Brexit voters expected precisely this kind of disruption. They rejected the advice of academics, economists, actors and every political party in Westminster – it always was a vote for the long term, sure to cause havoc in the short term.

If anything, Brexit seems less of a risk now. HM Treasury’s dire predictions have proved, to put it politely, unduly pessimistic.