It was courteous of our new Prime Minister, within hours of her coronation, to visit Edinburgh to see Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. Mrs Sturgeon, who we are routinely assured is a consummate politician who positively demands our unequivocal admiration, did not repay that courtesy. Instead, she spent the ensuing days mendaciously implying that she had some sort of veto over the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union. When even her usual toadies in the mass media struggled to believe this fantasy, she started peddling the idea – also completely unsubstantiated – that the rest of the UK could leave the EU while Scotland remained in.

Although it is not unknown for politicians to be fantasists – Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott seriously seem to think that millions of people will one day let them run the country, for example – Mrs Sturgeon has taken the art form to a new level. In September 2014, Scots voted by 55 per cent to 45 per cent to stay in the United Kingdom. Mrs Sturgeon and her friends decided to ignore this democratic decision. It was useful preparation for them, and particularly for her, for choosing to ignore Britain’s equally democratic decision to leave the European Union, about which she has been blustering for the last month.