I don’t know whether readers of this column will share my view that, over the past few weeks, history has been made at a rather more rapid rate than usual. But that is certainly how it appears to be.

Perhaps one of the reasons in my own case is that I have been rather involved personally in the changes which have come about. But I don’t think that this is the only reason why the speed of change seems to me to have increased recently.

Rather, I think what we have seen is the capacity of the UK’s vibrant democracy to cause change of a fundamental kind and then to absorb very rapidly the consequences of that change.

I think there are relatively few countries in the world which could see a population vote for a fundamental alternation in the constitution, remove one government and install a new government, fully equipped to deal with that constitutional change and fully able to command the confidence of the legislature, all in the space of a month.

As one of the effects of all of this has been my own departure from government alongside that of my closest political allies, I cannot say that I found it personally an easy or convenient process. But that is no concern to the public at large. From the point of view of the public interest, the whole thing has been conducted in a highly efficient and calm manner. We should be both proud and grateful that our country is capable of carrying out such change with so little disruption to the normal course of life.

There are, of course, very considerable challenges ahead. But I feel confident that we have both the people in place to meet those challenges and a political system which has once again proved its ability to respond with speed and dexterity when circumstances demand such a response.

I have seen this happen twice during my time in Westminster. The other occasion was, of course, the formation of the Coalition Government in 2010.

Following the indecisive result of the 2010 general election, I remember being assured by all sorts of people that it would be quite impossible for a system like ours to create a stable coalition government in a matter of days against a background of the worst financial and economic crisis since 1929. But, when it came to it, that is exactly what we did. The various participants in the British political system behaved in an entirely grown-up and sensible way – and a thoroughly workable coalition was established, which took this country out of the crisis and put our economy on a stable footing once more.