Thankfully, those knee-jerk responses are usually confined to a minority of politicians, usually right-wing, and some media, always right-wing. They are usually offered without any real appreciation of their impact on this side of the Irish Sea.

Nevertheless, they challenge what has become a healthy, parity-of-esteem relationship between the Britain and Ireland of today. Sadly, the durability of that relationship has been tested almost to destruction by the indifference of Brexiteers to the impact their go-it-alone ambitions would have on their small, determinedly independent neighbour.

This charge is counterbalanced by a growing suggestion — though it may be something else entirely — that prime minister Theresa May has been misjudged.

Rather than being the bumbling, dotty aunt she appears to be she is is, in fact, a patient Machiavelli bringing the wildest Brexiteers closer, increment by increment, to an understanding of what might be achieved under a divorce settlement.

She may understand that Europe, all 27 more or less united members are the Goliath to Britain’s David — and that Davids usually lose. She may recognise that a growing number of Brexiteers now see that they hardly generate the heft needed to cow the world’s largest trading bloc.

This dawning is seen at its sharpest in Brexit secretary David Davis. Today he accepts what not so long ago he almost regarded as a call to arms.

The multibillion-pound divorce bill, the step-by-step transition, the choreography of the negotiations have all, despite forgotten red lines, been accepted.

Remember, just a year ago Davis gave the impression that Britain, would inform Europe of the terms of the divorce once her majesty’s government had finalised them. Today he cuts a diminished figure, his sting drawn by the polity underpinning EU solidarity.

Though hardly unquestionably admirable it seems better that he should temper his, and other Brexiteers’ fervour by accepting that all ambitions have limits and that an uncomfortable compromise may, in the long run, be far better than the powerless isolation born of intransigence.

At this point all we can do is play the parlour game of trying to decipher the behind-the-scenes machinations to break this log-jam — though it seems unlikely it will be broken before next week’s deadline.

Despite that it seems reasonable to suggest that if someone like David Davis can temper his Make Britain Great Again stridency to better fit with what might actually be possible there must be some hope that a sanity might prevail.