How astonishingly, poetically appropriate was it that yesterday happened to be the anniversary of the Chilean coup in which Marxist president Salvador Allende was deposed by the military?

What more bone-chilling reminder of thwarted democracy, of fascist dictatorship could we be presented with on the day of infamy here in our own sovereign parliament? General Pinochet had his fighter jets and his murder squads; Theresa May has the European Withdrawal Bill.

The debate was a long and heated one. The stakes were high, and despite almost certain defeat, the plucky resistance refused to concede until the very end. They manned (sorry, staffed) the barricades well into the night, hurling rhetorical grenades at the advancing militia, demanding that democracy, not dictatorship, should win through in the end.

The Bill, said the Opposition (almost) as one, represented nothing less than a coup d’etat. It would, if passed at the end of the Second Reading debate, usher in a new Dark Ages, an elected dictatorship that would make Britain an undemocratic pariah.

Such ferocity, such passion, such principle!