Bear with me, but just want to take you back to a time before Trump tried to implode the Western Alliance, Vote Leave hadn't been fined, Gove hadn't admitted migrant fear-mongering had risks attached, and the government still had a vague Brexit strategy. A time known as Sunday.
Because amidst all the chaos of the past few days it would be wrong to forget the truly staggering nerve/contempt for anyone who listens to him of one David Davis.
Davis, you may recall, published a piece in the FT attempting to justify his resignation. ft.com/content/ee9c34…
It's no better than you would expect from a man who spent two years singularly failing to master his brief. It offers no solution to the Irish border, no viable route forward, and deploys copious unicorns and cakeism while adhering to a narrow definition of sovereignty.
However, it is useful in so far as it crystallises how the straw that broke Davis' loyalty to government was the question of regulatory alignment/independence. 
For Davis the UK needs freedom to diverge from EU regulation to secure US trade deal, exercise its democracy/sovereignty, and ensure it remains competitive. It is the last of these that interests me...
... because throughout the piece the dog whistle is clear. Davis insists this is about delivering better, not weaker, regulation. But his targets are regulations he deems as 'uncompetitive', 'anti-competitive burdens strangling UK firms', 'dynamic', 'pro-competitive regulation'
Needless to say, these words are about value judgements. What decades of history have taught us is when Davis' political tribe talks in these terms what they mean is making firms more 'competitive' by removing protections on the environment or workers that may constrain them.
Interestingly over the past 2 years more firms than ever before have turned round and said 'these protections can be annoying and imperfect at times, but they often deliver net benefits and on balance a level playing field and free trade are much more important'.
Now it is worth travelling back another six months, because it was then that Davis was not only insistent he did not hold these views he was reportedly angry that anyone would think for a second any of his colleagues were keen on deregulation.
This is no exaggeration. The Telegraph was briefed to ensure everyone knew about Davis' irritation with the scaremongers. telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/…
He gave a speech on it too, declaring that fears of a 'race to the bottom' on standards were "based on nothing, not history, not intention, nor interest".
I wrote at the time this was gas-lighting, pure and simple. The fears were based on what Davis' colleagues had said about environmental and workers rights, on the record, over and over again. businessgreen.com/bg/blog-post/3…
And now we know they were also based on fear that when Davis said that 'we will continue our track record of meeting high standards after we leave the European Union', what he meant was we should pursue 'regulations to release the anti-competitive burdens strangling UK firms'.
Davis would no doubt argue these two positions are compatible. To which anyone who has studied the deregulatory agenda of Davis and his allies must respond:
Just to be clear Davis mocked those who feared government would pursue regulatory divergence to undercut EU standards, insisting their concerns were baseless. And then quit government because it refused to pursue regulatory divergence to undercut EU standards.
One last coda to the above. Davis and co always point to EU failure to produce a Googler or Facebook as evidence EU regulatory framework is failing. But this is a gross simplification.
EU regs are imperfect (although given recent events strong case for saying they are in a more sensible place on data protection, etc than many others), but there are countless complicated reasons EU (and everywhere else) is yet to emulate Silicon Valley.
