Sibelius’s Concerto in D minor is widely considered the most virtuosic piece for solo violin. And if you can imagine 650 MPs reaching in perfect unison the apex of its final soaring crescendo at the precise moment Rome is hit by a nuclear bomb then you might have some idea where we currently are with Brexit.

It is extraordinary, really, to think that the great nation of the United States of America requires a mere three amendments to guarantee freedom of speech, a fair judiciary and the right to shoot up your local high school if people have said mean things about you on Facebook. And yet over here, we’re on our ten thousandth Brexit amendment now and have made absolutely no progress whatsoever.

Anyway, the facts on the ground are that Theresa May has suffered another “crushing defeat” in the House of Commons. A crushing defeat that wipes out her “narrow victory” of 29 January. It’s complicated, all this, and meaningless too, but the point of the exercise, if indeed there was one, was to try and show the European Union that, look, if you’ll just make some changes to the backstop, I can still get the deal through the House of Commons.

And the exercise was a spectacular failure. Jacob Rees-Mogg and his 80 hard-Brexit backers all abstained. She went down by 50 votes.

Before that, Jeremy Corbyn tried another amendment, trying to give Theresa May a week’s deadline to come up with a brand new withdrawal proposal. He lost, of course, but nevertheless managed to take up about an hour of the now almost exactly 1,000 left until Brexit. It hardly needs repeating that no complex withdrawal proposals are technically needed. There’s just a cliff edge, and that’s where we are heading.

Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Show all 18 1 /18 Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well These billboards were plastered by campaign group Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Undated handout photo issued by Led by Donkeys of their billboard featuring a blank tweet in Jeremy Corbyn's Islington North constituency in protest over what they claim is his lack of leadership on Brexit. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Tuesday February 12, 2019. For the past month, campaign group Led by Donkeys has been putting up posters all over the country featuring quotes mostly from hard-Brexit MPs which claimed the process of leaving the EU would be easy. The Labour leader is the group's latest target because of his failure to back a second referendum on Brexit. See PA story PROTEST Donkeys. Photo credit should read: Led by Donkeys /PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. PA Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter

The SNP leader Ian Blackford had a go too, trying an amendment that would force Theresa May to seek an extension to Article 50. Again, they went through the motions of getting up and walking through the division lobbies before inevitably losing that. The nation’s loss, but a marginal gain for Mr Blackford’s fitbit, should he wear one.

Jeremy Corbyn had planned one of his little bark-rants at the end of it all, to peer over the despatch box at Theresa May and spit some indignant abstract nouns at her, but found himself entirely poleaxed by the fact she wasn’t there.

Blessed at the best of times with the mental turning circle of an ocean mega liner, he was forced to improvise, and did so with the easy air of a Congolese computer technician unsure why his IT helpdesk job interview is taking place live on the BBC news channel.

“Her botched. And damaging. Brexit. Deal, Mr Speaker. I am surprised that the prime minister is not here. Botched. Damaging. As I said Mr Botched Speaker I am damaged that the prime minister is not here. Botched and damaging Brexit deal.”

Mercifully, he sat down soon enough. These would be testing times for any politician. It is, arguably, to Corbyn’s benefit that he is as out of his depth in them as he would be in a puddle.

For long hours beforehand, MPs took it in turns to stand up and read from a script that hasn’t changed in two and half years. David TC Davies, Tory MP for Monmouth and finder of recent fame through some of the most pyrotechnically stupid tweets ever committed, was on hand to say that warnings of food shortages, that have come from such trifling figures as, erm, Tesco, would come to nothing, because, “They’re probably from London. They should come to Monmouthshire and see our apple orchards.”

Later we learned that he was equally unafraid of warnings of “super gonorrhea” and “viagra shortages”. The specifics for why either would affect him he did not make clear.

But this is the whole point. Neither side can shed any light without the other shrouding it in darkness. There is now nothing anybody can say that cannot be written off as “project fear”, and more to the point, should even a tenth of the worst of it come true, the repositioning to attribute the blame to “Remoaners” and “the establishment” and so on is almost now complete.