The six-week holiday may have gone some way to concentrating the mind, but it has done little to clarify the thinking. Brexit remains as gnomic now as it did back in July. “The reason I’ve been saying Brexit means Brexit is precisely because it means it does,” said Theresa May, pioneering a new branch of illogical positivism during a rather tetchy press conference at the G20 summit in China.

What Brexit had appeared to mean at the G20 was the prime minister getting shunted to the back row of the leaders’ group photo, being briefed against by the Americans and the Japanese and being left to big up the fact that Mexico, Australia and Singapore have expressed a vague interest in doing trade deals with the UK. It’s a start, I suppose. If not the one that May would have been hoping for.

Nor was there any real enlightenment on the meaning of Brexit to be found in the Commons as Brexit minister David Davis gave his first lack-of-progress report. This was Davis’s first outing on the government front bench for more than 19 years and he came to the house flanked by Boris Johnson and Liam Fox as his security blanket. This unexpected show of unity was quickly explained; none of them have yet actually done anything to fall out over. Give it time. Quite a long time, to judge by Davis’s statement.

“Britain voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU,” he began. In Brexitworld a 52-48 vote is a total landslide. “So Brexit means Brexit means Britain leaving the EU.”

It wasn’t long before the Labour benches started laughing and shouting, “Waffle, waffle.” Davis took this as an instruction rather than a criticism. “We will be creating beacons and roundtables of organisations,” he waffled on. “There will be challenges but these are opportunities and everything will basically be fine once we’ve got round to thinking about it with the brightest and best minds in Whitehall, though obviously there can be no room for complacency.”

“Is that it?” interrupted the SNP’s Pete Wishart. Davis nodded. That was about it, though he was more than happy to repeat himself for another five minutes or so before concluding that he would be returning to parliament at regular intervals to give updates on everything that wasn’t happening.

When Emily Thornberry was first appointed shadow minister for Brexit alongside her day job as shadow foreign secretary it looked as if the reason she had been made to double up was because Jeremy Corbyn hadn’t been able to find anyone else willing to do it. Now the duplication looks more like an act of genius. Why bother to have a separate shadow minister for a department that wasn’t likely to be doing very much for the foreseeable future?

“So far all we’ve learnt about Brexit is that the government is not going to introduce a points-based immigration system or give £350m per week to the NHS,” she observed. “Both of which were two of the key Vote Leave promises in the referendum campaign. The government has gone from gross negligence to rank incompetence. You’re making this up as you’re going along.”

Davis took this as a compliment. A sign that he was really getting to grips with the job and that progress was being made. Even if only by a process of elimination. “We’re definitely not going to have a point-based system because that is what the prime minister said yesterday,” he declared. “What we are going to have is a results-based system that might be even tougher.” There again, it might not. It was precisely to sort out these kinds of details that he would be consulting roundtables and beacons.

Thereafter, the house divided on predictably partisan lines. Those on the remain side wanted to get to grips with the nitty gritty of what access to the single market Britain would get, how EU laws would be repealed and whether Britain would remain signed up to Europol. Those on the leave side thought such things were minor niggles and what really mattered was sticking two fingers up to the Frogs and the Hun and returning sovereignty to parliament. Though not to the extent of giving parliament a vote on the details – should any ever emerge – of the Brexit negotiations reached as it might vote against it.

“Is that it?” several more MPs enquired.

“Is that it?” Davis echoed. He’s been on the back benches for so long he hasn’t quite appreciated he’s now supposed to be answering the questions not asking them.

Not quite. There was just time for newspaper columnist Michael Gove to declare that everything was going far better than “the soi-disant experts with oeuf on their face” had predicted and begging the minister never to consult anyone who might know what they were talking about. So far, that’s the one promise Davis has been able to keep.