And in the third place, as a specific example of that, I had become increasingly concerned during my time as Chancellor at the weakness of the system of prudential bank supervision then prevailing in Britain. As a result, and with the full backing of Margaret Thatcher, and against opposition from the Bank of England, I brought into law the 1987 Banking Act, which introduced a new and superior form of prudential supervision for the banks. Sadly, when, a decade later, Labour got into office, they lost little time in abolishing the system we had put in place.

Had they not done so, it would probably still not have been possible to prevent the UK from being adversely affected by the 2008 disaster, but I have no doubt that we would have been considerably less badly affected than in fact we were.

But while Margaret Thatcher would have been appalled by the explicit rejection of Thatcherite economics to which the present government appears committed, I have no doubt that she would have been delighted by the result of the Brexit referendum, and the present government’s determination to implement that result.

I can testify that, throughout her time as Prime Minister, she became progressively more disenchanted with the European Union; and after her departure she wrote openly of the UK leaving the EU as the most likely best course.

But while she would have been delighted by the prospect of Britain regaining its sovereignty outside the EU, she would have been deeply concerned at the current state of the so-called negotiations.

Almost five years ago now I wrote a long article for The Times explaining why the UK should leave the EU. I was the first senior politician to do so. The issue was essentially political. The EU is a political entity whose objective — European political union — we do not share, it is a bureaucratic monstrosity with an inbuilt contempt for democracy, and, as (rightly) a non-member of the eurozone, we were doomed to becoming increasingly marginalised. But I also pointed to the substantial economic benefit of leaving.

This would come in two ways. First, we would no longer have to pay what, despite the UK rebate heroically negotiated by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, is still a massive annual net contribution to the EU budget, now running at well over £10 billion, year in, year out, and rising. And, second, we would regain our regulatory freedom, which would allow us to complete the programme of judicious deregulation which served us so well during the Thatcher years, but which at that time had to be confined to domestic, i.e. non-EU, regulations.

What never occurred to me is that we would need to negotiate a trade deal with the EU. Because we don’t. The WTO system is perfectly acceptable. It is the basis on which we happily trade with most of the rest of the world, and on which most of the rest of the world trades successfully with the rest of the EU.