There will be a day when the Brexit saga is finally over. There will come a day when the nation reflects on what was learned during the process which, no matter what the outcome, has not been edifying. Chief among the problems that Brexit has unearthed is a political process that is no longer working as it should.

This has been in part about the poverty of leadership. The country has been divided into two warring camps in a debate conducted in the most uncivil terms. The negotiation itself has been handled poorly. The government chose to trigger Article 50, which started the process of leaving the European Union, even though it had no real notion of how it would then proceed. With time running