Knocking political establishments off their high and mighty perches has become a popular sport among ordinary voters in the United States, France, and now the United Kingdom. And in the latter case they have enjoyed it a second time, if that is what happened in the EU referendum a year ago.

When electors go into the voting booth, it is unlikely that they will all be thinking what politicians want them to think – “I’ll vote for this lot; I won’t vote for them, or them.” It is a mysterious moment, impossible to fathom. “A plague on all your houses” is often the over-riding sentiment. In so far as the British and Northern Ireland electorate can be said to have had a single mind on 8 June, it was a desire to serve politicians with a mess of their own making, and leave it to them to sort it out.