IT’S an old cynic’s political maxim: “Never apologise. Never explain.” But on the Brexit Bill, the Labour Party has a power of explaining to do. Over the last week, from top to bottom, the people’s party has presented the Scottish public with more faces than the town clock.

Old devolutionists like Malcolm Chisholm argued his party should segue in behind the Scottish Government’s position, urging “the parties of devolution” to “stand with Nicola Sturgeon in defence of the 1998 Scotland Act and the principle of partnership based on consent”.

This week, having watched a string of his party colleagues and spokesmen blast the SNP for cynicism and intransigence for declining to endorse Whitehall amendments, Richard Leonard finally broke cover, telling a House of Commons committee that Scottish Labour now “wouldn’t accept” the UK Government’s Brexit fudge, arguing there are “some aspects” which “need to be addressed” and maintaining the UK Government’s latest wheeze “still fails to recognise properly the 1998 Devolution Act and the default position of powers residing with the Scottish Parliament and not the UK Parliament”.

The Scottish Labour leader also conceded that “I haven’t spoken to the Labour party in London, but I will be doing so over the course of the next two days”. Because, you know, on something as politically significant as this, it is important to maintain as fragmented and disunited a Labour front as possible. Because: reasons.

But over the past seven days, in Westminster and in Holyrood, Labour has managed to work itself into a situation of maximum fragmentation and disunity. Only the inclination never to apologise or to explain can make any sense of it.

When Labour’s Cardiff money man – Mark Drakeford – put his name to an accord with the UK Government on the Brexit Bill, it was the first major breakthrough in a lengthy stalemate.

It threw the politics into flux. Although Mike Russell has assiduously avoided criticising the capitulation of his Welsh counterpart, given where Welsh Labour entered and exited this argument, it looks like they’ve been bought for a song.

In September 2017, Carwyn Jones’s administration took a tough position on what was wrong with Westminster’s Brexit Bill. “The process of agreeing where frameworks are required, and what they should contain, must be one based on agreement, not imposition,” the Welsh legislative consent memorandum said.

David Davis’s Bill proposes “a new set of legal constraints on the competences of the devolved institutions in respect of these matters, which we consider wholly unacceptable in principle”.

Mark those last two words. “In principle.”

In exchange for trading in their principled opposition, Carwyn Jones’s administration have secured the clipped penny of Whitehall reassurance. The updated Welsh memorandum, meekly consenting to David Davis’s Bill, accepts that “while the Bill has not been amended” to set it out in black and white, “UK Ministers will normally seek the consent of Welsh Ministers where UK Ministers legislate on matters the Welsh Ministers can legislate on”. So that’s all spiffy.

Normally. In an abnormal situation. Under this administration. This specimen case of magic realists, historical re-enactment society conveners, undertakers, chancers, charlatans, glassy-eyed sociopaths, toy soldiers and Rosa Klebb impersonators. Mighty reassuring.

Initially, the Tories must have been cock-a-hoop to have secured Drakeford’s assent. You can’t begrudge them the glee. In a trice, a political wedge had been driven between the two devolved administrations. Labour sensibilities, reluctantly arrayed behind Nicola Sturgeon’s administration, were immediately torn. And for the Tories? They suddenly had political hay to make about an isolated SNP First Minister, caught cynically pushing a nationalist agenda, putting party before country – all the old clichés.

And tellingly, as soon as the Welsh news hit, those clichés immediately bubbled into the mouths of a number of the party’s Scottish representatives.

The itchy trigger finger of their Shadow Under-Secretary of State for Scotland responded more or less immediately to tidings of accord between London and Cardiff.

“I don’t think this comes as any surprise,” Paul Sweeney huffed. “The only objective of the SNP throughout has been to pursue an agenda of maximum intransigence, concocted grievance and bad faith in negotiations, because ultimately they have no interest in the delivery of a constructive outcome.”

Neil Findlay was Mr Sweeney’s echo in Edinburgh. “Scottish Labour has worked with colleagues in Wales and the Scottish Government to ensure the mess the Tories have made on devolving powers could be resolved through negotiation,” he said. “Today it looks like Mike Russell had a deal and Nicola Sturgeon kyboshed it.”

As recently as Wednesday, this analysis found a third voice in the House of Commons. Fife MP Lesley Laird observed “representatives from the Labour Government in Cardiff have been able to reach a deal. We need this sort of grown-up politics from the Scottish Government too.” You know the script. Nats gonna Nat. Gripe. Grievance. Too boring and too familiar further to elucidate.

But the reflex reactions of politicians are always interesting. Although this significant detail largely went upreported, when Findlay and Sweeney fired up their Twitter streams, they had no idea of the substance of the accord their Welsh counterparts had struck.

They had no sight of Whitehall’s amendments. No knowledge, really, of why Mike Russell and Nicola Sturgeon still felt disinclined to give the Bill their blessing. So what did Scottish Labour’s Brexit team do? Did they wait for an update? Scrutinise the substance of the UK Government proposals before sounding off? Did they hell.

They instinctively took the partisan line and – on Findlay’s own account – did so in the absence of any detailed understanding of the UK Government’s ideas, retreating to the safe space of Nat-bashing.

Explaining the stark contrast between his kneejerk response and his party leader’s subsequent position, Neil Findlay told the BBC “we just got an email saying there was going to be a statement, there was no dialogue” with Mike Russell. Reports of the to-and-fro of the relevant documents vary. Other opposition members seem to have been adequately briefed.

But the humbler truth is this. Scottish Labour have never had much of an idea what it feels about either the Scottish or Westminster Brexit Bills, or why. There’s the old slogan to defend, of course.

Labour: the only real party of devolution. Anxiety about being out-flanked saw their MSPs reluctantly slipstreaming in behind the SNP on the continuity Bill.

The manoeuvre was accomplished with bad grace, and the party’s footwork around the issue has never felt confident or comfortable. Throughout the devolved controversy about power grabs and consent, Scottish Labour have exhibited all the hallmarks of being bounced into backing the Scottish Government, still leaving all the old vestigial suspicions about being the Nationalists’ useful idiots still burning behind the eyes.

You might well ask yourself why anyone in Holyrood should be chided for declining to strike a bad deal when political consensus on the basic structures of Brexit cannot be found around the green baize of Mrs May’s cabinet table? Forget Holyrood. Forget Brussels. Her Majesty’s Government can’t agree a common Brexit position with Her Majesty’s Government.

Theresa May’s dysfunctional administration is in no fit state to impose its particular brand of misrule on anyone. Leaving the customs union, and no hard border in Ireland, and frictionless trade with the European Union – believing six impossible things before breakfast seems increasingly like a precondition to participating in the UK cabinet. And faced with that intractable incoherence, that dishonesty, that stubborn delusion that with Brexit all things are possible? Directionless, buffeted, Labour’s weathercock just continues to swivel.