So, enter the strong man, Boris Johnson, hero of Brexit.

Last week all 118 of the bishops of the Church of England wrote urging both him and others to use temperate not inflammatory language.

Their collegiality demonstrated urgent presence of mind.

Johnson’s rabble-rousing makes him a populist politician, but no Prime Minister.

The current descent of Westminster into an ugly morass of vituperation, ratcheting up death threats and verbal abuse on social media towards large numbers of MPs, chief among them women, only shows how quickly one man’s bullying tactics (aided and abetted by his closest advisers) can transform what we normally understand as civilised communication.

Britain is manifestly unprepared for a disorderly Brexit.

The Johnson government has now changed the narrative so that anyone who wants to pursue an orderly Brexit is now guilty of "surrender"; and is therefore a "traitor".

This plays very well into the hands of angry voters.

But the idea that Brexit will be "done" if we leave on October 31 is another deception.

We will still be negotiating the Irish border, discussing tariffs, food and safety standards, policing and security and a raft of potential trading deals (assuming we pay our debts) for another decade.

We shall only just be beginning to hear about Brexit. Three years’ weariness will be as nothing: the overture merely before curtain up.

In the meantime the bishops rightly call for the rule of law to be respected (i.e the Supreme Court).

They are clear that the referendum result must be upheld. But most fundamentally they reassert the human dignity and respect that we should honour in one another.

One of the things the bishops and the other churches (in former statements) have highlighted is that Brexit is far from being simply about uncoupling from the EU.

It is about austerity, inequality, the failure of democracy, the rise of nationalism, the threat of fascism, and above all else the preservation of wealthy elites.

It is those same elites who are winning the propaganda war (it is the Conservative Party which talks most about civil unrest for example).

They will not be the ones living on the streets, being sent to prison or deprived of adequate healthcare.

Mr Johnson’s utopia is not destined for most of us.

It is one thing for him to deliver us into the worst possible Brexit: but quite another to engineer a total debasement of our political discourse and social order.

What is really going on is very far from what it appears – our national tragedy is that so few are able to see it.

Canon Dr M Graham Blyth

Rennie Walk, Heybridge