Ironically I had a great conversation with Staggs over the weekend in Healesville on the nature of Black Swans, and how they by definition come from left field.

“Grexit” was (to my mind) an economic inevitability that was not materially consequential beyond the precedent it would set for the EU. It would annul the guiding principle that the EU was a political project designed to prevent the bloody continental conflicts of the past, and that membership was permanent and irrevocable.

Greece is tiny. It is a basket case. But everyone bent over backwards to avoid its ejection simply for the dreadful message the event would send to the world about how impermanent and fragile the entire arrangement was.

We’ve now just had the second largest economy in the Union, which is in no such financial distress, say in no uncertain terms that it wants out. That matters.

If you look at a map of the UK districts and how they voted, that also matters. The Scottish referendum now takes on another context, who knows what it means for Northern Ireland, and it shouts from the rooftops to all other separatist EU factions that rightly or wrongly, this is a very real option. The Rubicon has been crossed.

The European project is now, as it was always destined to be, on its knees. I hope that history in this instance neither repeats nor rhymes.