The human mind has a natural tendency to fit opinions or circumstances into categories. The weather is fine or miserable, the economy is strong or weak, and political views are Right or Left. In fact, of course, the reality is often more complex but our brains jump to fit things into convenient pigeonholes that spare us the burden of more detailed analysis.

So it is that the arguments about how to implement our exit from the European Union are now being categorised as leading to a “soft Brexit” or a “hard” one. Yet it would be a mistake to think this way, partly because there are countless permutations of how to do this; also because there might be creative solutions with broad appeal; and additionally because many decisions will be neither soft nor hard but just unavoidable.