Take Keir Starmer, the former director of public prosecutions-turned-Labour Remainer-in-Chief. Starmer is the ‘shadow Brexit secretary’ – the sort of through-the-looking-glass job description Orwell might have invented, like calling a government’s fake-news department the Ministry of Truth.

This week anti-Brexit secretary Starmer warned Corbyn that no Brexit deal he might cook up with Theresa May would pass through parliament, unless it promised a ‘confirmatory referendum’.