As the immediate dust of the referendum settles and we all sit on our beaches (or walk up Alps) enjoying a quiet summer, there is time for reflection on the self-inflicted hurt that the British people have wished on the country.
As the incomparable Professor Michael Dougan said at the Treasury Select Committee on 5 July, the Brexiteers were ideologues and, like all ideologues, they ignored what they did not want to hear and concentrated on their own interpretation of the world.
We may also be ideologues, believing that the UK cannot be so stupid to ditch membership of the very organisation that has helped the UK to weather the storms of the last forty years, has helped bring peace and understanding to the European continent and has been a force for good not only in so many areas of legislation but throughout the world.
But listen to Michael Dougan (around 11.58) for an explanation of the complexities of developing trade agreements and the lack of realistic options available.
The venn diagram has the words 'Won't crash the UK economy' at the top. That is the thing that the Brexiteers seem never to have considered. They simply did not want to think that leaving the EU might damage the UK economy in both the short and long term and that, in doing so, the UK would not have the money to spend on all the things they had promised, certainly not the £350m per week.
Laura Kuenssberg's piece for the BBC underlined just how inept the Remain campaign had been and showed how Cameron and Osborne had concentrated on economic messages as people had traditionally voted with their wallets. The message failed as people. Instead, people voted with their hearts and the stoked-up fear that the enemy was at the gates. The Remain campaign failed.
An article by Ben Chu, the Economics Editor of the Independent, is headlined Brexiteers are becoming ever more incoherent – could it be they don’t know their own minds? He then launches into a catalogue of the gang of three's naiveties, ending with the immortal line: What goes on in the minds of leading Brexiteers? Who honestly knows. But it’s terribly confusing for the rest of us. You can say that again.
The great question will be whether 'politics' - in the grubby sense of backroom deal-making, posturing and kowtowing to whips - will triumph, or whether we have a Prime Minister who will take into account the advice of the much-derided experts and think about the economy.
If she doesn't then I have no doubt she will go down in history as the joint-worst Prime Minister this decade.
