Until 2016, it was perfectly possible to serve as a Labour Member of Parliament without worrying too much about the European Union. Certainly, there were some MPs who liked to emphasise their continental sophistication by occasionally press releasing this or that EU law and reminding their voters about how wonderful it was that Britain was a member of the club. But such declarations of love were almost entirely motivated by expressions of opposition to the EU by Conservatives. A bit like Scotland’s football fans going out of their way to be well behaved when abroad just to show up the English fans.

The two subjects that would guarantee the lowest attendance at meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) were Northern Ireland and the EU. Since the referendum, of course, that’s all changed. It’s now quite difficult (though not impossible) to find a Labour MP who doesn’t feel defined by our EU membership. It turns out that most of those stories told to local constituency selection meetings about how childhood experience of poverty led them to join the Labour Party, of seeing at first hand the impact of Thatcher’s pit closure programme, of benefiting from a free university education, were a load of bunkum.