The scene: one of the country’s choicest cricket grounds. The setting: a highly seasoned senior civil servant in reflective mood. “We’ve gone through a serious constitutional change and the British people haven’t noticed,” he says.

His use of the words “gone through” suggest that he doesn’t mean Brexit. It would be “going through” if he was describing that. So what was it? “We’ve lived through the ending of collective Cabinet responsibility and I’m not sure we’re going to get it back,” he explains.