A week is said to be a long time in politics, but since the EU referendum results that old adage should be changed to an hour is a long time in British politics.

The Daily Telegraph cartoonist, Matt, a man surpassed in talent only by our very own Ian Knox, summed it up perfectly with a cartoon saying: “I’m studying politics. The course covers the period from 8am on Thursday to lunchtime on Friday”.

That cartoon is already out of date.

I went for a coffee on Monday and when I returned five minutes later Nigel Farage had stood down. Last Thursday I was watching Boris Johnson make his leadership pitch on Sky News and I dropped a pen, bent down to pick it up and by the time I looked up he’d already ruled himself out.

David Cameron didn’t even wait until the first shot was fired before he came out of Downing Street waving a white flag.

The amount of back stabbing, ladder climbing and dastardly, devious plotting at play over the last fortnight in both the Conservative Party and among members of the Parliamentary Labour Party in their clumsy coup against Jeremy Corbyn has been painful to watch.

Never have so many men appeared so spineless in so short a time.

But apart from the fact British politics seemed to attract gutless men, what have we really learned since Friday June 24?

Well, we know that the Leavers didn’t seem to have a plan beyond simply leaving. Their victory in sending the future of millions of people into a vortex of uncertainty seems to have taken them by complete surprise.

We don’t know what a post-Brexit UK will look like and although everyone has an opinion, no one really knows for sure. Closer to home and there are still no answers as to how the movement of goods and people across what will be the only land border between the ‘European Union and the UK’ will be controlled. For citizens of Northern Ireland, and more specifically those living in the Border regions, there are very real fears about what that will mean for agriculture and livelihoods in areas where some farms and family homes straddle both jurisdictions.

It also has repercussions for our own peace process and the Good Friday Agreement which is heavily reliant on and commits itself to complete incorporation into the European Convention on Human Rights. Plans to pull the UK out of the ECHR not only leaves massive holes in legislation that will take teams of lawyers years to plug, it also undermines the peace accord voted for in a referendum by the majority of the people on this island.

We now have one referendum which the majority of the people in Northern Ireland voted against undermining the principles of a referendum they voted in favour of.

And none of this is a surprise because those leading Brexiters, the people who pushed to bring us to this point of uncertainty, were vocally against the peace process.

What we do know for certain – and it’s the only certainty at this time – is that the Conservative Party is a nest of vipers who are loyal to no one, not even each other.

Michael Gove, one of the architects of Brexit, a man who politically stabbed his friend Boris Johnson in the back in the most public of ways, thought the peace process was a ‘capitulation’.

Civil servants and private negotiators are now to be tasked with trying to map out a way forward.

Politics has changed and not for the better. The brutal murder of MP Jo Cox has barely even been mentioned over this last fortnight. Racist incidents are on the increase and while the main men have gone running for the hills and well funded retirements, it seems that it will be a woman who will be left to lead a post Brexit Britain and clean up the mess made by a cacophony of men. Theresa May, a woman who wants  to scrap the Human Rights Act, or Andrea Leadsom a former banker who hasn’t ruled out giving Farage a role in the EU exit negotiations. The future is far from bright.

Time to ‘take our country back’ cried the Leavers in the run up to the referendum. They got their wish only what’s left of their country in two years time may not be worth having.