This is not a strong government – so why isn’t the opposition opposing it?

‘For heaven’s sake, man, go!’ A week after the Brexit referendum, and that was David Cameron at the despatch box, on Jeremy Corbyn. It might be in the Tories’ interest for Corbyn to be leading the opposition, said Cameron, but it wasn’t in Britain’s, and he should push off sharpish.

At the time, it sounded a lot like deflection. As in, wind your neck in, Hamface. You’re the one who just lost a referendum and your own career, so don’t go blaming it on wild-eyed Grampa Simpson over there, just because he was too busy making jam to do enough press conferences. Latterly, though, I have begun to realise that Cameron was speaking not out of pique, but fear.

He knew that his defeat over the EU was a wound suffered not just by his particular government, but by government itself. Henceforth the Prime Minister, whoever that turned out to be, would be a hostage to populism, operating like a child who runs down a steep hill and cannot stop his little legs from pumping, even when the terror strikes. Moderation, prudence, caution, alternative views, or at the very least just enough friction to keep a steady speed — these were all going to have to come from the opposition. And there wasn’t one.

The great mistake of Labour moderates, I suppose, was to have engineered a battle for the soul of the opposition when there was nothing coherent to oppose. They should have waited until now. In the last few weeks, really quite abruptly, Theresa May’s government has coalesced into shape. We now know beyond any doubt which Brexit Brexit means, and it is a hard one of the most Brexity sort.

‘We are leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe,’ Mrs May said in her Lancaster House speech, although her platitudes suddenly have subtext, and the subtext to this one was ‘more’s the pity’.