So, it’s farewell to chancellor Philip Hammond and Europe minister Alan Duncan. Both men have ruled out serving in a Boris Johnson -led government. It’s nothing personal – just Brexit , they say. No doubt they jumped before they were pushed.

For Hammond, a No Deal Brexit, which Johnson has pledged to keep on the table, is not something he could ‘ever sign up to’. Similarly, in his resignation letter, Duncan complains of having ‘to spend every day working beneath the dark cloud of Brexit’.

Johnson is often accused of duplicity. But this is a charge that could also be levelled at Hammond and Duncan. Both of them were ministers in a government that claimed its overriding purpose was to deliver Brexit. But as we are now all painfully aware, the aim of Theresa May’s administration was to deliver a Brexit that kept most of the existing arrangements in place. This flew in the face of Tory manifesto commitments to leave the EU and its institutions, like the Single Market and the Customs Union – and to do so without a deal if necessary. ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’, was the famous mantra, printed in black and white in the 2017 Tory manifesto.