I was going to begin today’s column by writing: “When the dust finally settles on Brexit . . .” Then I realised the truth. The dust is never going to settle on Brexit. Brexit is forever. The dust will obscure everything for the foreseeable future. Every nook, cranny and crankshaft will be clogged by it. Even if Scotland votes for independence, Brexit will still define and frustrate. Brexit is our lives now.

Yet when the dust-storm briefly eases, allowing us to view these times with a moment of clarity before the next swirl of incoherence, a striking feature of the new landscape will be the born-again pragmatism of the SNP.

In the House of Commons on Monday, SNP MPs voted for a soft Brexit. They