A tweet from the Tory MP Stephen Crabb: “Coming from College Green interview bumped into a colleague who declared how mad everything is. Told me how important delaying Article 50 is now. I asked him why he voted against it then. ‘I have my association AGM coming up’ he replied.”

Cue shrieks of horror and disdain.

But now I’m going to do something different: ask for your sympathy for this wretched fellow. I know full well that almost all of you, my readers, will remain unconvinced, preferring the shrieks of horror and disdain. Horror and disdain have, frankly, characterised too much of this columnist’s output over the past two years.

So now I’m going to stick up for cowardly Tory MPs: backbenchers and ministers who