The avalanche of news as well as weather is ironic: when the hole we’re excavating gets deeper, convention is to stop digging.

It’s hard to conceive how a greater hash of Brexit could be made. The heroic absence of sensitivity towards the EU appears a badge proudly borne by the Government’s negotiators to whom it grows increasingly implausible to credit the ability to deliver an imaginative, workable deal.

Listening is done with the ears; with the heart, eyes, skin: attending with the complete self to the complete picture in front of you.

The team of British negotiators are lost, have lost, were lost before they began in virtue they just don’t get it. They don’t get the hurt the EU feels and they don’t get we no longer have a voice.

Blustering in with demands will not achieve them. Deafness to the impact our message yodelled across the channel in June 2016 will only shrink further the shred of benevolence for which it’s plausible to hope.

Infusing the approach to negotiations with emotional intelligence would still not alter that unfortunate inevitability of approaching severance. It would, however, demonstrate an intellectual sensitivity and willingness to show strength through flexibility: better that than the brittle snap of failure to which we toboggan.