Over the last few weeks Boris Johnson has, according to his friends, acquired a “haunted” air, as the incremental but inevitable moment that the cabinet would sign up to a soft Brexit crept ever closer.

Those close to the foreign secretary say that he feels he has been “bounced” into agreeing to a deal that is a world away from the hard Brexit he campaigned for. “He thinks that what’s on the table is so flawed we might even be better off staying in,” one said.