Two months on, and the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote is both still a talking point and on the back burner. Brexit was never going to be a here-today, gone-tomorrow thing.

Many civil servants in the European Union — certainly in the European Commission, which is seemingly fighting a turf war with the European Council and the European Parliament for control of the EU’s Brexit negotiating team — will secretly have been pleased the UK government did not disrupt their summer holiday plans by quickly invoking Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and starting the formal two-year countdown to Brexit.

Instead, the new UK government made clear its intention to invoke Article 50 only when it is ready to start negotiations, which are now scheduled to occur by the end of March 2017. It was thought they might be delayed until as late as October 2017, to avoid impinging on the national elections in France (in May 2017) and Germany (in September 2017). And it is arguable