On Monday, we will witness the ritual miracle of Britain’s peaceful transfer of power, from one Conservative leader to the next. The party’s genius is that it keeps reinventing itself and scrambling the country, so that each new Tory prime minister — now, presumably, Liz Truss — feels like a new regime.

There’s more that’s familiar about this moment. As an ex-superpower, Britain swings between hubris and despair. There was war-induced hubris in 1914 and 1982 and despair in 1956 (the Suez Crisis), 1979 (winter of discontent) and the 2008 financial crisis. The vote for Brexit in 2016, uniquely, combined hubris with despair; some Leave voters thought the UK could do without Europe, while others were expressing their pain. Now a hubristic leader is taking charge just as Britain’s economy and public realm melt down. How will that play out?

Even the British term “omnishambles” cannot capture the current despair. Energy bills will rise 80 per cent next month, real wages are lower than in 2007, foreign investment has evaporated since 2016, the trade deficit is the worst on record and the Bank of England predicts a recession lasting more than a year. Given southern Italian levels of productivity outside London and the UK’s self-exile from the world’s largest free-trade zone, Britain’s regions have no obvious long-term economic strategy beyond flogging national heritage to foreigners.