When we instigated Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty we set in train a timetable that will lead to us leaving the EU in March 2019. 

For the likes of the man we will have to get used to calling Sir Nick Clegg, that is a national disaster. 

Sir Nick and his fellow Remoaners have never reconciled themselves to being told by those who voted Leave that we’d had enough of their project to have Britain ruled from Brussels.

You can see from their sneering attitude to the return of the British passport that they have contempt for anyone who does not think we should leave power in their hands – that we hoi polloi should know our place. 

But for the majority of us, of course, March 2019 is a date to anticipate with excitement and – yes – not a little joy. 

That’s in part because we appreciate the democratic and economic benefits of self-government. 

Project Fear said that Brexit would be a disaster. We have already seen the nonsense of that with booming employment. 

And The City, we were told, would collapse with a “Brexodus” to cities such as Frankfurt and Paris.

In reality, The City now has more jobs than before and is recognised as being even more dominant as the global financial centre. 

Bit by bit, little by little, even some of those who were most active in the attempt to stop us leaving are adjusting their attitudes in the face of this reality. 

For example, yesterday the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) – one of those organisations that had forecast economic doom and gloom in a Brexit-induced spiral of collapse in consumer spending and investment – changed its tune. 

“In practice this has not happened,” they admitted. 

They had said that we would be left behind by France. Now they say that we will pull ahead of France by 2020. 

As for a trade deal, which we have continually been told by the wiseacres is nearly impossible in the time frame before we leave in March 2019 – again, the CEBR now says it is more likely than not to happen. 

That is because once again in the real world it is in everyone’s interests to conclude a deal. 

The EU runs a trade surplus with us so they would be simply mad to choose to wipe that out. 

As for the idea that the time it has taken to conclude deals with other countries shows it is impossible to do one with the UK in barely a year – this is wilful nonsense. 

None of the other nations had been EU members and so needed to adjust every law and rule to comply with EU rules. We are there already. 

More generally, the real difference is that for most of the past year the EU has been behaving like a spurned lover who wants to punish the one who rejected it. 

Even for the Eurofanatics, with their all-consuming arrogance, this was always going to be replaced at some point by logic and realpolitik.

As we saw earlier this month with the first formal agreement from the other 27 members on Brexit, the realisation has now dawned that we really are leaving and a deal is in their interests as much as ours.

They might sometimes seem so but the EU leaders are not fools. They know that if no deal is agreed they will suffer – and they have their electorates to worry about. 

But even if they choose to put punishing us for leaving ahead of their self-interest in concluding a deal, we can stand tall and confident.

We are not some enfeebled nation at the mercy of others. We are the sixth largest economy in the world – and, if the CEBR is right, soon to be the fifth. 

We are in the G7 of the world’s leading economies – there as of right, and not simply, as for most EU members, solely through our EU membership. 

We are members of the UN Security Council. We are part of the so-called “Five Eyes” security agreement. We have nothing to fear from life outside the EU, with or without a deal – and so much to gain. 

Future prosperity will not be shaped by huge trading blocs that are imposed above the heads of national voters. 

Rather, it will be nimble, agile independent nations that carve out a role for themselves and draw up a path to success. 

Across the planet we can see voters wanting self-determination. 

As Ian Stewart, of accountants Deloitte, put it this week: “Despite the huge focus we have seen on how much uncertainty there is, Britain remains a very good place to do business. 

“It is still early days but the reality is better than a lot of the commentary suggests.” 

That is putting it mildly.

Next year we will see even more apocalyptic and heated warnings of life outside the EU by Remoaners. 

They know that 2018 is their final chance to frustrate Brexit and so they will throw everything at it. But they will fail. They will fail because a deal will be done and our path to separation will be clear. 

And they will fail because even our supine and weak political class will realise that if they reject a deal, reject Brexit and try to overturn the referendum result, they will provoke a democratic crisis the like of which we have never faced in modern times. Brexit is coming.