This week in parliament, MPs have considered just one small piece of government legislation. They have also heard a statement from the prime minister about the weekend’s disastrous European council, and on Wednesday, it’s prime minister’s questions. On Thursday, they are off on their Christmas holidays. Another week gone, another four legislating days padded out – with apologies to the backbenchers raising important constituency issues in one-off short debates – with nothing more significant than an amendment to the Mental Capacity Act. It’s not just that Brexit is stalled in parliament. Westminster is stagnating completely.

In the shadow of the immediate Brexit crisis, its opportunity costs – the bills left unprepared, let alone debated and passed – are not often considered. Theresa May insists that she has an ambitious programme of social reform she yearns to roll out to fulfil that early promise about a country more at ease with itself. In the aftermath of last week’s confidence vote, it was impossible to miss the real regret in her voice as she confirmed her intention not to lead the party into the next election. She will for ever be the Brexit prime minister. And not even someone as motivated by duty as May is without the vanity of yearning to be remembered for something positive.

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Brexit is sucking the life out of Whitehall. There is no mental bandwidth, no spare personnel, not even many worked-out ideas that don’t relate to the monstrous project. Every sinew is strained to wrestle against disaster. After the 2017 election, it was announced there would be a two-year parliamentary session to get all the Brexit bills through. The Queen’s speech, in the aftermath of Grenfell, was short not out of respect for the Queen’s advancing years but because the government had nothing to say, and even if it had, there was neither time nor – as important – money to do it with.

But, I hear the diligent student of parliament protest, what of the daunting list of bills on the parliamentary website? Look a little more closely. It is mainly made up of unavoidable measures relating either to Northern Ireland’s failure to form a government or keeping taxes coming into the Treasury, and a handful of other stuff that keeps the country afloat. There’s Europe. And after that, it’s like there’s been a lock-in at the local with everyone challenged to come up with their own idea for a new law.

Did you catch the debates on the Middle Level Act, which turns out to be about an alteration to navigation on the middle level (obviously) of the Fens in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk? Or notice the new law on what to do if you run over a cat – tell the police – and the two new laws about bats, rolling back bat protection in another sop to the housebuilders. There’s a bill making it an offence, as if it wasn’t already, to attack a retail worker, and another proposing a law against wearing medals with intent to deceive. So many of them are just short-lived jaunts from backbenchers, but seriously?

It’s not easy managing business in a hung parliament. Yet back in the 1970s, when Labour had a theoretical majority of about three and a vast balance of payments deficit, the government managed to introduce child benefits, state earnings-related pensions, carers’ allowance, invalidity pensions and a mobility allowance, and reform tenants’ rights. It set up Acas, as well as the first police complaints board and the health and safety commission, and it turbocharged comprehensive education. It suffered countless defeats and in the end it ran into the ground. But it never lacked a sense of purpose.

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Or take the Edward Heath government immediately before that final Wilson administration: from 1970 to 1974, Heath’s majority was at least bigger, although still only 30. He also had a single huge and highly contentious ambition, which was to take Britain into Europe. In the end, he could only get the bill that we are about to repeal by conceding a free vote. He was prepared to do it because he believed so passionately in its purpose.

Even in other circumstances, May could be crippled by her own political personality, her caution, her maladroit people management. But she is unquestionably restrained by the constitutional absurdity of having to balance two rival remits: on one hand the referendum, and on the other the general election result. Neither of them is in any way an adequate guide to the real question that has to be faced, which is the shape of Britain’s future relations with Europe, and the kind of country Britain itself wants to become. Her determination not to confront the reality of these huge questions, and the reluctance of the opposition to challenge her effectively, condemns Westminster MPs to wade through treacle, and the rest of us to hold our heads in despair.

• Anne Perkins is a former deputy political editor of the Guardian