David Cameron is finished, heading for a place in history as the Prime Minister who gambled with Britain’s place in the European Union and his own career, and lost.

The only question left is how long Mr Cameron hangs on in the job, and that will be decided not by him but by his opponents within his party.

He is finished because the country has rejected his case on the biggest decision the UK has taken in a generation.

So ignore all that talk from Leave-backing Tories about letters of loyalty and wanting Mr Cameron to stay on. Ignore all Mr Cameron’s pre-referendum claims that he would stay on regardless of the result.

That’s just political game-playing, a matter of how to manage the first days and weeks of the new era of British history that starts today. An era that Mr Cameron never wanted to start.