It started with good intent; the battleground a different and older Union and an earlier referendum in 2014 over Scotland, not Europe. I didn’t see this at the time, but think if it hadn’t come hot on the heels of the Independence Referendum the civil service would have taken a different and more careful approach in 2016. We would have been more protective of the principle of impartiality and seen the EU Referendum as the deeply political and divisive vote that it turned out to be. It had been okay in Whitehall to express a view in the Scottish Referendum – we wanted the Union to stay together. So, just as we were happy in September 2014, people were upset at the result in June 2016. It was normal to express views in the open that leaving the EU would have grave and damaging consequences, especially economically, as it had been normal in 2014 to say the same about Scotland. For both the commonplace presumption was that the people who had voted to leave had not understood how things worked. We rolled from default remain to default remain.