Boris Johnson and other leaders of the Leave campaign have been denounced for not having a fully fledged plan for Brexit. But this wilfully misunderstands the purpose of a referendum. David Cameron called the vote, so it is hardly outrageous to suggest he should have made some preparations for what happened if he lost. That, after all, is the Government’s job – not to second-guess the outcome. It was never in the gift of Mr Johnson, Michael Gove et al to instruct Whitehall to make contingency plans, because the official government position was to stay in the EU.

Preparations have clearly been inadequate: it was wrong and short-sighted not to instruct the Civil Service to prepare for a Brexit vote. By definition an In/Out referendum can have one of two results and to ignore the possibility of a Leave victory was complacent in the extreme. Some arrangements were clearly in place, as testified by the swift and reassuring statements from Mark Carney, the Bank of England Governor, and George Osborne, the Chancellor, designed to calm the markets. Unfortunately, one of the reasons they were so spooked was the apocalyptic warnings made during the campaign by the Bank and the Treasury.