Shortly before cabinet was due to end, David Davis announced that he had some important business to discuss. Was everyone watching I’m a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! and how did they rate Stanley Johnson’s chances of winning? This prompted some of the most animated and intelligent conversation heard at cabinet this year and it was nearly lunchtime when the prime minister brought the meeting to a close.

“Damn it,” said the Brexit secretary. “I’m not going to be able to get to the commons to face the urgent question on the Brexit impact assessments. Ah well, I can always send an underling along to take the flak.”

The junior Brexit minister Robin Walker didn’t look at all happy to have been made the fall guy. His face was pinched with anger and he looked as though he might throw up at any time as he tried to defend the indefensible.

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“Wewereclearfromthestart,” he began, the tension in his voice making him speak far too quickly and run his words together. There never had been 58 sectoral analyses, his department had rushed around like mad over the past three weeks to cobble some bollocks together, and everyone ought to be grateful for what they had got. Or something like that.

It took a while for the shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer to compose himself. He’d heard more convincing mitigation from an eight-year-old caught nicking sweets. Not that there was much difference listening to the monkey when Davis was the organ grinder.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Junior Brexit minister Robin Walker began to disintegrate and resorted to sulky one-word answers. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

Starmer tried to spell things out slowly in the hope that something might get through to Walker. He walked across the floor of the house to tap the minister on the head. H-e-l-l-o-a-n-y-o-n-e-t-h-e-r-e? Apparently not. Starmer pressed on regardless.

This was about transparency and accountability. Parliament had passed a binding vote ordering the government to hand over its unedited and unredacted assessments to the chair of the Brexit select committee and all Davis had handed over was a couple of ring-binders full of newspaper cuttings. If this was really the government’s total preparation for Brexit then the country was screwed. The secretary was treating parliament with contempt.

At this point, Walker became even more incoherent. Something that hadn’t previously seemed possible. The assessments hadn’t been edited or redacted because they had never existed in the first place. But if they had existed, then everyone would need to be mindful that there might have been something sensitive in it. But he couldn’t say for sure one way or the other as he made a point of never reading anything that was put on his desk.

Thereafter the session descended into both tragedy and farce. Even for a government whose specialist subject is incompetence, this was something else. For the Labour benches it was like crushing flies. Would the minister like to explain why Davis had previously told the select committee that the 58 analyses went into “excruciating detail” and that the prime minister herself had read them, when he was now claiming they hadn’t even existed?

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Walker wouldn’t. By now he looked to be on the verge of tears. Oh those sectoral analyses! His department had never realised everyone had been talking about those sectoral analyses. The ones that had been completed but were somehow still uncompleted.

Bit by bit, Walker began to disintegrate and resorted to sulky one-word answers. How could the analyses give away the government’s negotiating position when it had already given it away by saying we were leaving the single market and the customs union. Whatever, Walker mumbled. Stephen Timms tried the direct approach. How many of the pages hadn’t been handed over? “I don’t answer hypothetical questions,” Walker sobbed, frothing slightly at the mouth. His descent into madness was complete.

Even the Conservative benches had to glumly conclude the government was clueless, though several, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith, tried to offer the minister a way out. Perhaps the government could pass another motion saying it hadn’t realised the previous motion was binding and what it now wanted was one that would allow it to hand over whatever cobblers it felt like. Brilliant. Now you see it, now you don’t.

The session ended with several points of order. All of which focused on the procedures for charging Davis with being in contempt. The speaker chose his words carefully. The minister should get himself before the select committee as soon as possible and start grovelling. And even that might not save him. Over in Brussels, Michel Barnier raised a glass. As he had suspected, he really was dealing with idiots.