Yes, Nat, I agree. Brexit was not, in the end, a referendum on the UK’s EU membership. It was a referendum on the status quo, couched in simpler terms than a general election could be— boiled down to a simple yes/no question, ‘are you content?’. The exact same thing is happening on the other side of the Atlantic right now, of course.

We have what we have, and though I’m also reading everything I can find about loopholes, second chances and non-binding resolutions, I fear that we will not shut down the awful, self-serving ‘leaders’ who have got us to this position if we just demand a recount. I have not much more than contempt for those who voted ‘leave’ and then within 24 hours confessed that they didn’t mean it, or had changed their minds, or googled ‘what is the EU?’. But there are not 17 million of those people living in the UK.

‘We’ will be okay, ultimately. It may mean a change of plan, an adjustment to the household budget, some belt-tightening. But more importantly, as you say, we have to learn the lessons and understand what this is telling us about our country, and what our responsibility to it is, as the privileged. I don’t know, yet.