The biggest Brexit donor was the stockbroker Peter Hargreaves. He gave £3.2m to the leave campaign. He justified his enthusiasm as follows: “We will get out there and we will become incredibly successful because we will be insecure again. And insecurity is fantastic.” If you are wondering, “Fantastic for whom?”, the current television ad for the company he co-founded, Hargreaves Lansdown, could supply an answer. It presents itself as a safe haven in times of disruptive change. Among the examples it provides? Brexit.

Perhaps our most poignant political folk tale is the notion of accountability. Those who hurt and undermine us will be punished, while those who help us will be rewarded. In reality, little in either business or politics could be further from the truth. A more reliable rule is that those who generate insecurity profit from it.

In early 1915, a newspaper owner called Benito Mussolini fomented riots in favour of joining the first world war, and threatened revolution if the government refused: Italy’s neutrality, he claimed, brought shame on the nation. Few warmongers were as vocal or visible. Disastrously unprepared and ill-equipped, Italy joined the war in May. The resultant sense of national humiliation and loss – the “mutilated victory” – provided an opening for the fascists … led by Benito Mussolini.

In spring 1940, chaotic planning and extreme indecision by Britain’s first lord of the admiralty caused disaster in Norway, when the Allies could not prevent an invasion by Nazi Germany. The failure of the military campaign triggered the resignation of the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain. He was replaced by … the first........

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