It’s wrong, really, to tease Theresa May for saying that “Brexit means Brexit”. It’s an elegant and memorable soundbite which says, simply: trust me. If you voted to leave the European Union, you won’t be tricked into Britain staying a member in all but name. No more European Court of Justice, no more “free movement of peoples”. British voters will live under their own laws, control their own borders and set their own democratic future. But what kind of future does she have in mind? This is proving the far thornier question.

We learned, this week, that the Prime Minister believes Brexit means a whole lot more than Brexit. It means the start of a new approach to immigration, where companies are asked to draw up a list of the foreigners in their workforce and make the figures public. An approach where voters are told that they may have lost their job, or be suffering low pay, due to these immigrants (who “take jobs British people could do”) in spite of employment being at a record high. And those who might have reservations about such language? The sneering metropolitan elite, who disparage the patriotism of the working class.