At the very end of his central London speech to mark a year to go till Brexit day, Jacob Rees-Mogg mentioned that he’d considered going to a Trappist monastery in Leicestershire if the UK had voted to stay in the European Union. If only he’d told us that before the referendum, the outcome might have been very different. Anything to shut him up. Even if it was only for half an hour or so.

The Tory MP and chair of the European Research Group is rapidly becoming a broken record. An increasingly isolated figure talking to fewer and fewer people about exactly the same things. For his latest outing there were just a handful of Brexit survivalists and his mother. Before long, he’ll be talking to himself in an empty room.

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Rees-Mogg puts a lot of work into being Rees-Mogg. No one presents themselves as a relic from the 18th century by accident. His trademark pin-striped suits, his neatly combed, schoolboy haircut and his unfailing good manners are all part of a carefully cultivated image. One designed to draw attention to himself. Behind the fogeyish carapace is a thoroughly modern politician on the make.

What’s missing is any real sense of self-awareness. He can give the performance and he can deliver the expected soundbites. He is nothing if not an entertainer. His tragedy is that the joke increasingly looks as if it might be on him. While he contentedly draws a few laughs by referring to remainers as cave dwellers, he is apparently oblivious to the fact that it is him who is getting left behind. His red, white and blue Brexit is slipping away from him and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest At Rees-Mogg’s latest outing there were a handful of Brexit survivalists and his mother. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Rather, he prefers to exist in a state of denial. One where memories are reshaped to fit his own narrative. Joining the Common Market was a momentary act of weakness prompted by our feelings of inadequacy over Suez. The fact that the country finally voted to leave the EU was a sign that Britain’s “indigenous people” had finally cast aside their sense of inferiority. Global Britain had seldom been made to sound more like Little Britain.

Everything is recast as a triumph of taking back control. That Britain was able to make a strong response to Russia over the attacks on Sergei and Yulia Skripal was purely down to the fact that we had had the courage to leave the EU. Had we voted to remain, then we’d merely have invited the Kremlin to come on over and knock off as many of their expats as they wanted.

Come to think of it, we’d have probably saved them the bother and got one of our own spooks to do their dirty work for them. Just send us a list. Wet Jobs R Us. And the only reason, other EU countries had chosen to back us was because they were in awe of our newfound independence. The idea of international cooperation, of achieving something through membership of the EU, was dismissed out of hand.

Play Video 3:15 Will the real Jacob Rees-Mogg please stand up? - video profile

Yet for someone so sure of Britain’s natural place at the head of the world order, Rees-Mogg was surprisingly reluctant to put it to the test. He enthused about the glories of the British bicameral legislature but didn’t sound at all keen that parliament might be given a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal. Similarly, though he was certain that a second referendum would result in leave “winning by a mile”, he was in no hurry for that to happen. In case, we looked a bit like Ireland or Denmark.

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Towards the end there was just a hint that the mask had slipped and shards of reality were allowed to surface. He admitted all his red lines had been ignored in the transitional Brexit deal, offered no solution to the Northern Ireland border, and only had empty threats for Theresa May if she failed to deliver a final deal that was to his liking. His mouth opened and shut but no meaningful words came out. Perhaps that Trappist monastery was still a viable option after all.