I’m a career civil servant. For years I worked quietly and unsnarkily in a government department under a secretary of state whose name would have stumped your average pub-quizzer back in the good old days before Brexit catapulted the UK’s political meme industry into the big time. Let me recap.

In February, I was deployed into Operation Yellowhammer, a sort of temporary £1.5bn sweatshop for civil servants tasked with preparing the country for a no-deal Brexit scenario. Then, at the end of March, we coquettishly flirted with the no-deal iceberg as the prime minister’s deal got rejected for a third time, which nudged the deadline down the road a bit to 12 April.

A recent report by the Institute for Government says we will never be as well prepared for no deal as we were in March

But then – hurrah! On 10 April, the European council offered the UK a six-month extension to 31 October – along with a stern admonition from Donald Tusk to “not waste this time”. Phew! Optimism abounded, and within a few weeks Yellowhammer’s 6,000-strong chain-gang was disbanded, returning most of us to our day jobs.

During the definitely-not-wasted months since then, the Tory leadership floating circus has been towing us back toward the no-deal iceberg for another tilt at oblivion. Assuming Boris Johnson is installed as prime minister, his first acts – before parliament disappears on holiday for six weeks – will be to shuffle the deckchairs and restart the no-deal preparations process con brio, leaving barely three months to get everything done before we all turn back into pumpkins on Halloween. Will that be enough?

The answer is: probably not. According to the Civil Service World take on a recent report by the Institute for Government (IfG), we will never be as well prepared for no deal as we were in March. The task of standing Yellowhammer back up – sending thousands of worker bees like me back to operational centres to implement no-deal contingency plans – is formidable. As the IfG’s Joe Owen noted, it will all need to be “resurrected and restaffed, and earlier rounds of staff training will need to be repeated”. The Financial Times, among others, has concluded that this is a sign we’ve already run out of time.

I used to be more optimistic. After all, there’ve been some nice tributes paid to the resilience of the UK civil service. Our collective mental health is bearing up surprisingly well, if our diplomats’ claims are to be believed. And, some senior civil servants – certainly not the rest of us – have even done rather well out of Brexit.

That mojo is evaporating. There’s now speculation that if Johnson becomes prime minister, our current boss, Mark Sedwill, will be defenestrated after clashing with Johnson’s sidekick Gavin Williamson over the Huawei affair. Sedwill’s earlier intervention – a blistering 14-page dossier on the dire consequences of a no-deal Brexit – won’t have endeared him to the possible prime minister either (although he now claims the civil service is in “pretty good shape” for no deal). Our former boss Bob Kerslake was more on point when he compared Johnson to an escapologist who’d “put on the straitjacket, padlocked the door and started the tap running”.

Civil servants have legal obligations to serve ministers with objectivity and impartiality, as I wrote earlier this year. I stand by that. But the civil service’s technical work relies on facts and evidence – not force of personality. If, for example, there’s no quantity or quality of analysis that could convince a new prime minister to avoid disaster, then collectively we’ll have normalised fanaticism or – even worse – the cynical appeasement or cultivation of it. Either way, having withstood Theresa May’s hostile environment for years, it’s a rotten and destructive place for officials to be at the start of yet another new premiership, with the hardest bit of Brexit still to go and countless other neglected policy areas needing attention. Things can get worse – just look across the Atlantic.

Wasn’t it ever thus for civil servants? Not really. While the recent hardening of the Brexiteers’ macho resolve to secure a no-deal Brexit is frightening, it’s not that surprising. What’s new is the sheer destructive glee with which so many public figures have embraced magical thinking. We now know, thanks to YouGov’s poll of Tory party members, the full horrifying scale of the ruling class’s suspension of disbelief. Brexit must happen even at the cost of significant economic damage, the breakup of the UK or the destruction of the Conservative party itself.

As for morale among those tasked with implementing Brexit? I find comfort in movies – not just as an escape but also as a way of trying to understand Brexit. I’m easily dazzled by the creative sorcery of those highly paid illusionists who can hypnotise and manipulate their audiences to feel any emotion, believe any narrative. And, one day, Hollywood may be able to compete with them. For now, not even Andy Serkis in a Boris-suit could spin that blond mop into box-office gold.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt will have to ditch no deal – or face an election | Simon Jenkins Read more

The upside of this absurd uncertainty is that if he becomes prime minister, there’s plenty of time for Johnson – he’s an entertainer first and foremost – to dramatically reverse his position, grab the headlines and unite parliament’s remainers by cynically recording a charity cover of All I Want For Christmas is EU – dressed in full Bullingdon top hat, tails and fishnets. Sadly, a bumbling cameo appearance in a heartwarming Waitrose Christmas ad trailing its exciting new line of chlorinated turkeys is more likely.

I probably just need to man up, eh? Think positive! Spirit of the Dambusters! After all, Brexit won’t last forever.

So you heard it here first. After we’ve sorted Brexit, we must prepare the UK for a glorious, starlit future far outside the stifling oppression of the solar system. Don’t tell us the technology doesn’t exist, empire haters! British ingenuity will rise to the challenge by developing a new generation of splendidly phallic BAE rockets running on fuel heroically distilled from a patented combination of Pimm’s and chutzpah. Let Trump have his piddling Space Force – I’m ready for Project Yellowrocket. Ad astra per mendacium!