Recovering control in these areas is a welcome rejuvenation of our democratic culture. But the Whitehall muscle memory in some of these policy areas has grown attenuated over the decades. So there is a need for both leadership and radicalism in making the most of the new opportunities democratic control of these policy areas will bring.

There is also a need for something more. A sense not just of the possibilities that Brexit brings but also a shared, noble and idealistic conception of what a new Britain must be. A champion of the very best in our, shared  European civilisation. A beacon for the values which Standpoint has defined and promoted over the years — democratic self-government, a belief in the essential dignity of every human soul, freedom of speech and conscience, civil liberties grounded in the rule of law, resolution against extremism, intellectual openness and ambition and respect for grace and beauty in both human culture and the natural world.

In his breathtakingly gripping new book, The Strange Death of Europe (Bloomsbury Continuum, £18.99), the distinguished Standpoint columnist Douglas Murray argues that these values are under siege, their beneficiaries now buckling under the accumulated weight of guilt at their good fortune and the debts incurred by past generosity.

Murray is specifically, and brilliantly, perceptive in anatomising how European elites seem almost deliberately incapable of articulating what has made European nations so attractive to so many newcomers. Our traditions of liberty and our political stability rooted in democracy make the nations of Europe, in common with other nations from Canada to Israel, a welcome refuge for those seeking a better life. But Murray finds a remarkable reticence on the part of European leaders when it comes to taking pride in those traditions and values. He quotes the Swedish government’s lead official on integration questioning whether Swedish culture was worth preserving and saying, “Well, what is Swedish culture? And with that I think I’ve answered the question.”

It seems that faith in our institutions, history and values has become the new love that dare not speak its name.

There is, perhaps, a connection between the views of some European leaders that Europe’s nation states are somehow historic carriers of the virus of violence and prejudice — and so they must be superseded by a wholly new union — and a reluctance to see what newcomers see so clearly — that it is in the very structure of historic European nation states that accountability, democracy, liberty and security best flourish.

But one European leader who is very far from making that mistake is our Prime Minister. Theresa May understands, deeply and instinctively, that attachment to place — parish, town, constituency and country — is the starting point for solidarity, loyalty and social justice. A classic Burkean, she knows that it is by loyalty to these little platoons that concern for the welfare of others — fellow citizens and then all mankind — is fostered.