Inside the gurgling, labyrinthine large intestine of Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s multibillion-pound scheme to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, we’ve been working hard. But we’ve also been waiting for weeks for the government to fully activate Yellowhammer, just as other bits of government have been waiting for the launch of Project Redfold, Operation Brock, Operation Kingfisher and other initiatives named after Hotel California guest ales.

Just as you've been waiting, we civil servants wait, too, in a sort of zombie fugue state, to be told what happens next

Just as you’ve been waiting for parliament to serve the final course of this interminable, inedible and criminally overpriced meal, we civil servants wait too, in a sort of zombie fugue state – neither dead nor fully alive – to be told what happens next.

I’ve tried being angry , and I’ve given depression a go. Both have failed, so I’m now reaching across the aisle of my own cortex to find a phase of the Kübler-Ross Brexit grief cycle that my splintering personalities can live with. I’m now in the phase I should have started with: bargaining.

Bargaining is the stage where a brush with reality compels you to try to get back what you’ve just lost. For Brexiteers, that’s the prestige and pride that the last three years (and possibly the 60-odd since the Suez crisis) have leached away: they’ll vote for anything that promises to stop them feeling foolish and humiliated. For remainers, it’s the multilateralism and pragmatism they feel has deserted the British public square. For the prime minister, it’s a functioning cabinet.

As professional civil servants conscripted into Yellowhammer, our own bargain with the blasphemous Brexit underwater deity looks something like this. “We have seen, O Lord, the spaffing of cash and talent up the wall of Operation Yellowhammer. If you but spare us from the precipice of no deal, we promise to never let things get this bad ever again. Hallelujah, hallelujah.” Or something like that.

Outside the Palace of Westminster, in the corridors of Whitehall, the spin rooms and endless newspaper columns, other supporting cast members are entering the bargaining phase in their own special ways as the rising no-deal waters lap at their ankles.

First, the hypersexualised vitriol of the hard Brexiteers, in which no deal increasingly represents a sort of fantasmic economic and political Viagra that will finally – by Jove, finally – enable a diminished and flaccid Blighty to stand upright to march into those sunlit uplands, with a pip-pip.

Second, there are the serious claims that the civil service is already preparing for a future public inquiry into how Brexit has been handled. This Chilcott-style proposal is one of the first major signs of Brexit self-awareness that might find out how on earth we got into this mess and how to make sure it never happens again.

Third, we saw the rare spectacle of a civil servant issuing a stark, 14-page warning to the cabinet about the consequences of no deal. Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, didn’t mess about. The leaked (not by me) excerpts made clear the nature of his bargaining stance with the cabinet: don’t allow this disaster to happen. Good man – that’s his job: to speak truth to power in the national interest.

But it feels right to focus on this now, not least because you, the public, are very shortly going to stop finding Brexit funny – if you ever did. And quite right, too. I’ve even shelved my plans to bring out a satirical Brexit board game in time for Christmas, combining the best bits of Monopoly, Buckaroo and Russian roulette.

So, leaving out the snarky metaphors, let me give you an insider’s take on why Operation Yellowhammer gives me reason to hope.

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Yes, many government departments have been paralysed or pulverised by the unrealistic demands of no-deal preparations. But the truth is that some have been energised too – giving us a small glimpse of what could be achieved if we really got our act together.

Let me explain. Many of my fellow Yellowhammer colleagues are in their 20s – I’ve heard a rumour that the Brexit surge of civil servants has lowered the average age of some departments by five years or more. More of them are black and minority ethnic, more live with disabilities, and thanks to a lot of brilliant campaigning more are watching out for each other’s mental health. There’s definitely an esprit de corps here in Brexitland. A bit like Love Island after a tsunami warning, except with more photocopiers.

Sure, everyone I know is keeping a beady, worried eye on the news throughout the working day. But my impression is that they’re a bit braver than most civil servants. Close proximity with the florid protesters in hi-vis tabards lingering outside our Whitehall front door doesn’t intimidate them – it sort of motivates them. They don’t feel the tension between their political views and their day job – trying to help the country to prepare for no deal as professionally and as impartially as they can – half as acutely as some of their older colleagues. Like me, for example.

They’re also determined that their work on no-deal planning – in the increasingly likely event that no-deal never happens – can be used again, in whatever phase comes after this one. Most of all, they are not the remoaning saboteurs that other anonymous pieces have disgracefully characterised them as.

Well, so what? Staffing Brexit, although civil service pay overall remains largely frozen, is one of the costliest civil service recruitment exercises ever undertaken.

Acres of analysis will be written about what mistakes were made – the Institute for Government has already made a start.

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My point here is simply that while future inquiries will probably be devastating, they will probably also find evidence of positive significant change in civil service culture. Mark Sedwill and civil service chief executive John Manzoni hinted as much when they reminded every civil servant a few days ago that all sides of the Brexit debate have shown admiration for the civil service.

If we collectively manage to avoid a no-deal Brexit – if we avoid Brexit altogether – we should still weep for what those no-deal billions could have been spent on.

But if those costs end up also contributing to a complete re-imagining of what public service is for and how it is conducted, I can live with that. Even if it’s a long way from being a bargain.

• The writer is a civil servant working inside Operation Yellowhammer