Ask any country “what are you doing in nine days’ time?” and it would go something like this:

Sweden? “Same old, same old.”

Germany? “Business as usual.”

Belgium? “Same, but with waffles.”

Australia? “Fighting spiders, as per.”

Finland? “Same as always.”

Japan? “Normal country stuff.”

UK? “Not a fucking clue.”

The people in charge have had three years to make a success of Brexit, and here we are nine days away from Brexit and we don’t even know if we’re nine days away from Brexit yet. Sure, Theresa May is asking for an extension, but only in the same way that you’re free to ask your teacher for an essay extension, when they know full well you’re going to cram that time full of yet more useless procrastination.

By now, the leave camp promised everything would be sorted and we’d have all the trade deals ready to go the second after we leave the EU. Which is why it’s not the most reassuring thing when Liam Fox came out with a massive shit-eating grin to announce that he’s signed a deal with Liechtenstein, a country with a population roughly the size of Liechtenstein. Apologies if that doesn’t help clarify the size of Liechtenstein, but Liechtenstein is literally the go to example of somewhere as tiny as Liechtenstein. See the problem I’m having?

We are out of options and nearly out of time. So how have we spent our supposed last precious few days in the European Union? As is traditional, we’re having ourselves a constitutional crisis.

After seeing the government show up over and over again with the same deal and a good feeling about it this time, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, decided he’d had enough and invoked a parliamentary convention so old that not even Jacob Rees-Mogg saw it coming from his vantage point of 1837.

Play Video 1:35 Speaker says May cannot have vote on same Brexit deal - video

Bercow ruled that the government shouldn’t be allowed to bring back the same motion again if it were “substantially the same”. Clarifications of the withdrawal agreement wouldn’t be enough, nor would changing the pagination to make it look slightly smaller, as the government genuinely did last time.

It was admittedly quite funny that Theresa May is in the position of defending getting people to vote over and over again until she gets the result that she wanted, which is exactly what she’s said she objects to when it comes to a people’s vote. But it turns out nobody can take a joke anymore, and soon the tabloid media was in full meltdown, accusing Bercow of everything from “destroying Brexit” to having a “smirk that says Brexit be damned”, which is quite a complex political thought to convey just using your face.

Three years Brexiters have had to sort this. Might I suggest that if you’re mad at Bercow for following parliamentary rules you might reserve a teensy-weensy bit of anger for a government whose only plan with 10 days to go was to show up with the same rejected scrap of paper wearing a false moustache.

After the announcement, some ERG members expressed dismay that they weren’t allowed to vote again (see how funny this is? Strongly approve of Bercow making decisions based on how funny they are to people who retain the capacity for rational thinking) and that they had been planning on voting for the deal in the next meaningful vote after all. If only they’d treated the meaningful vote more like a meaningful vote and less like tantric legislative foreplay before a full 29 March climax, but you live and learn.

Owen Paterson, a man you’d only recognise as someone who looks a bit like an accountant you also didn’t know the name of, said that people regularly recognised him on the Tube, came up to him and told him they want MPs to “just get on with it”, which strikes me as a claim so improbable it should be on the side of a bus, the passengers of which would stare dead ahead not talking to anybody, because THAT’S HOW PUBLIC TRANSPORT ACTUALLY IS, OWEN. NOBODY TALKS TO STRANGERS, LET ALONE UNRECOGNISABLE BACKBENCH MPS.

Meanwhile, at what passes for the grown-up table these days, it became clear that if May asked the EU for a short extension several cabinet ministers would resign, whereas if she decided to plead for a long extension several other cabinet members would resign.

Notable pie Chris Grayling is said to be among the ministers to have threatened to depart if May opted for a long extension, with all the accompanying risks of stability for businesses, increased investment and a stronger pound. Who knows how much better off we’d have been forced to be as a country if he hadn’t made this bold move.

So, faced with one option that’s at least vaguely sensible and one that’s obviously shit, May decided to go with her usual strategy and do nothing whatsoever. At the end of the day, the EU announced that they had received no letter from the PM outlining her request, let alone an actual plan.

PMQs: May tells MPs she is not willing to delay Brexit beyond 30 June – Politics live Read more

Only Theresa May could, through indecision, decide to delay getting a fucking delay.

She eventually announced this morning that she would like to delay our problems slightly, thus solving them forever.

So here we are. Nine days to go, hoping that 27 countries that May said would be crushed if they didn’t offer her a good deal are kind enough to all let us stay a little longer if we beg. If we’ve annoyed any one of them enough, say, by calling them Nazis or likening them to Soviet prisons for the past three years, they could veto our extension.

We’re out of plans and moustaches. And if Germany lives up to stereotype they’ll want both.

• James Felton is a TV and radio comedy writer