My Westminster colleague Rachel Sylvester, in a typically perspicacious column this week, spelt out the case for a new referendum on Brexit. She quoted Lord Adonis, the Labour peer, who said such a vote would be “a first referendum on Mrs May’s Brexit terms and whether people like them” and not “a rerun of the 2016 referendum when they were offered a beautiful Brexit house before the survey had been carried out”.

Nicola Sturgeon says that she is keeping an open mind on this possibility. Indeed, the first minister seems to be warming to the idea. In October last year she said that the case for consulting the people on a Brexit deal was “hard to resist”. By the start of this month that position