On June 23 2016, the UK voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the EU. That was the easy bit. For while it was within the Government’s gift to give people the chance to vote on our EU membership, it was not within its power to determine when or on what terms we would leave.

That depended on the rules of the EU club and, above all, on the Government’s negotiating skill.

In the event the process has proven a difficult one. Indeed, with just four weeks to go to the official exit date, the country finds itself in limbo, still unsure both when it will leave and on what terms. It is therefore hardly surprising that, during the last two and a half years, reputations have been shredded and the public become increasingly doubtful about what has been achieved.

At the outset, voters were perhaps predictably split down the middle as to whether Mrs May would get a good deal. ORB, for example, found at the end of 2016 that 36 per cent thought that Mrs May would secure “the right deal for Britain” and 36 per cent that she would not. The balance of opinion tilted in Mrs May’s favour after her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, which appeared to instil a degree of voter confidence in her Brexit strategy, but since then it has been downhill all the way.