Politics is stuck in a hall of mirrors, where nothing is quite as it seems and nobody means exactly what they say. Theresa May is presiding over Brexit, a policy that she opposed in last year’s referendum campaign on the grounds that it would make the country poorer and less safe. Even now the prime minister cannot say whether she believes it is right for the UK to leave the EU but she is taking the country out anyway.

Damian Green, the first secretary, goes so far as to say that he would vote Remain again if there were another ballot tomorrow, yet he is de facto deputy of a government committed to breaking with the rest of Europe in a harder than necessary fashion.