There are some mornings when it’s worth writing down your reaction to news that has broken overnight. Thursday 11 April 2019 was clearly one. At 5.30 a.m. an extension of six months to Brexit day agreed by the EU 27 drizzled into my semi-active grey cells.

First reaction? Relief that we were not going to grind into a hard exit at 11 p.m. on Friday 12 April. I had gone to bed thinking there was a small but still real chance of this happening. If one of the 27 had vetoed the extension (and one was all it would have needed), I had my own contingency plan drawn up.

With the family in the Orkney Islands, I would have made my way just before 11 to a place, for me, of special serenity – one of the narrow peninsulas of South Ronaldsay, just beyond St Margaret’s Hope, where you can absorb the beauty of Scapa Flow to the right and the mighty Pentland Firth to the left.