It was plain to see that the country had already fallen apart. That was nothing to do with the EU referendum, though the virus of course exposed the indulgence that it had always been to spend three years and two elections trying to settle the previously unimportant issue of the UK’s EU membership.
Nor was the suggestion that the country had fallen apart anything to do with the devolved nations, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and their growing wish to leave the UK – though this too was telling. It was internally, inwards on itself, that the country had already fallen apart, and in hindsight it was obvious that the drama of all those constitutional cleaves each indicated that a material shock of any scale at all would be enough to see it off.
