But, of course, the media narrative leaves little space for nuance. On Tuesday, for example, I am speaking to a large meeting organised by Muslims for Britain, which turned out hundreds of thousands of Leave voters among patriotic Brits of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, and whose founder, Saqib Bhatti, is the new MP for Meriden. But Muslims for Britain scrambles the FT-BBC-NYT assumption that Leavers are bigots or outright racists, so its existence is rarely acknowledged.

In precisely the same way, many sensible Remainers despair at the way their side is now represented on air by its maddest and most disagreeable proponents. It is painful, even for committed Leavers, to watch the way in which previously level-headed and distinguished men have become unhinged over the issue. To take a telling, because trivial, example, the minting of a new 50 pence coin with the words “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” prompted rage from, among others, Philip Pullman, and drove Alastair Campbell and Lord Adonis to pledge that they would refuse to handle the new tender.

How, you might ask, could anyone be triggered by that motto? How could anyone see Leavers’ celebrations as a deliberate provocation, a rubbing of Remainers’ noses in the result? When Britain joined in 1973, there wasn’t just a commemorative 50p piece.

There were also concerts and special sports fixtures and even an appearance by the Royal Family. To my knowledge, not a single Eurosceptic chose to interpret those events as an insult. Labour activists descending on Conservative HQ on the night of Tony Blair’s victory in 1997 chanting “So how does it feel, you bastards?” That’s nose-rubbing. Singing “Sweet Caroline”? Not so much.

The singers have solid grounds for their optimism. Britain has outperformed the eurozone for the past two years, and is forecast to do so for the next two – even by Goldman Sachs, which spent 2016 warning that Brexit would be a “disaster” that would force it to pull out London, but which recently opened a new billion-pound European HQ in… London.

Most of the 48 per cent are glad that the gloomier forecasts have not been realised. But some cling determinedly to their pessimism. They ignore the fact that, in defiance of all the pre-2016 forecasts, Britain continues to grow. They disregard the rise in jobs, exports, business confidence, investment, stock prices, and manufacturing output. Like every doomsday cult faced with the failure of the end of the world to arrive on time, they have simply postponed the date of their imagined apocalypse.

First the downturn was going to follow the referendum result. Then it was going to come when Article 50 was triggered. Then it was going to come on Brexit day. Now, apparently, it will come at the end of this year because the EU won’t agree to a trade deal.