Earlier this week a young activist called Darren Grimes was being interviewed outside parliament about the possibility of a second referendum. His finger was doing a lot of work. If there were to be a decision to hold such a vote then, he predicted, jabbing at the Palace of Westminster behind him, “people will quite rightly turn around and punch our parliamentarians in the nose and say ‘I am not putting up with this a moment longer’. And we will unleash forces in this country that have not been seen since the 1930s!”

There’s been a lot of this kind of talk recently. Politicians have done it, as have commentators and the occasional academic. A second referendum would be horribly divisive, lead to blood