When I referred in my last column to Chancellor Philip Hammond as the only grown-up minister in this chaotic cabinet, I was unaware that he had just put his name to a joint article in the pro-Brexit Sunday Telegraph with his arch-foe Liam Fox, making the following statement: “We respect the will of the British people – in March 2019 the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. We will leave the customs union… we will leave the single market… ”

True, this was followed by reports that he wanted, in effect, to retain quasi-membership for several years, but the two emphasised that such a precaution “cannot be a back door to staying in the EU”. There were also reports that Hammond had in some mysterious way scored a victory, which contrasted vividly with other reports that his attempt at some kind of coup had been foiled.

Certainly, what he put his name to in that article was not good news for those of us who firmly believe it is not too late to arrest the progress of Brexit in its tracks. But then the shenanigans in the present cabinet’s approach to Brexit negotiations call to mind the Queen in Through the looking-glass telling Alice: “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

The fact of the matter is that this government is so unstable that anything could happen in the next two months. It is an open secret that up to half a dozen members of the cabinet, and at least one double-breasted outsider, are metaphorically polishing their daggers. As my colleague Andrew Rawnsley has pointed out, the only thing holding up a revolt against Theresa May is fear that, by precipitating yet another election, the assassins might end up with Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.

But Shakespeare’s “vaulting ambition” is a powerful factor in politics, and there are those who wonder how Theresa May can survive the party conference in October unscathed.

Which brings us to the Labour party’s position on Brexit, which most people seem to regard as every bit as confused as the Conservative one.

It is generally assumed that the problem with Jeremy Corbyn’s lukewarm opposition to Brexit during the referendum was that he is a lifelong Eurosceptic and thinks the EU is a capitalist conspiracy against workers.

But most enlightened Labour MPs and trade unionists are more aware than Corbyn seems to be that the EU is in fact very strong on workers’ rights. As for Corbyn’s apparent fear that the EU is the enemy of publicly owned corporations, he must surely be aware of the degree to which so many of our so-called “privatised” utilities and much of our transport network are already in the hands of continental state-owned concerns.

It seems to me that Labour now has a golden opportunity to capitalise on the strong pro-European feelings of the young, as manifested in recent surveys and, indeed, in the last election.

In which context, there was a powerful open letter not long ago to Corbyn in his (and my) local paper, the Islington Tribune, from a longtime Labour party member, Michael Wolff.

He told Corbyn: “Despite your current popularity, your ambiguity about the EU and that sense that you are out of step with our nation’s youth on Brexit won’t keep the momentum you’ve created rolling in your favour.” The message was epitomised in the headline: “My message to Jeremy: Don’t let our young people down, burst the Brexit bubble.”

For those of us who care more about this nation than the Brexiters, the situation is urgent. Professor Vernon Bogdanor at King’s College, London, maintains that Labour’s electoral gains in June “raise the question of whether the decision in the 2016 referendum is final: for, although Labour was not a Remain party this year, the British Election Study found that the party’s ‘soft Brexit’ policy played a large part in its substantial gain in votes. In constituencies where over 55% voted Remain, the party achieved a swing of around 7%.” Bogdanor concludes that “the election was the revenge of the Remainers”.

The state of our nation is pitiful enough without the addition of self-inflicted damage. The hospitals, the care homes, the rail service – too many services are, to adapt May’s phrase, “just about managing”.

This is bad enough, but the economy has slowed down as well: as the economist Simon Wren-Lewis points out, the slowdown was at first aggravated in 2015 and 2016 by the continuing austerity policy, but more recently has been hit by the impact on real incomes of the Brexit-induced devaluation of the pound.

Now, in theory one of the few benefits of that depreciation should have been a rebalancing towards exports, and some surveys suggest that export orders are rising. But, as Wren-Lewis says, so far the depreciation “has not led to any compensating increase in exports because firms are not going to expand markets that might soon disappear because of leaving the single market or customs union”.

We are coming up to the 50th anniversary of the devaluation of the pound under Harold Wilson in 1967. Then as now, commentators worried that for a long time the trade balance was not improving. Then they discovered the “J-curve” – the immediate effect had been to worsen the balance of payments by making imports dearer and exports cheaper. But eventually the improvement in price competitiveness led to a better trade performance.

But I am with Wren-Lewis: this time, any J-curve effects are likely to be offset by the deleterious impact of Brexit if our political leaders do not have the gumption to tell the electorate it made a grave mistake in last year’s referendum. Time to think again!

• This article was amended on 31 August 2017 to correct a quotation about Lewis Carroll’s Alice and her adventures.

