Finally we have a confirmed use for Chris Grayling. He is the government’s secret weapon to make even the most incompetent and second-rate of ministers feel good about themselves. Not content with having wasted the best part of £14m on the government’s first-ever roll-on, roll-off pizza delivery service – all toppings guaranteed to be ferry free, the transport secretary has now spent more than £50K on failing to organise a lorry jam in Kent.

If the aim has been to make clear to the EU that the country is willing to spend any amount of money to prove we are totally unprepared for a no-deal Brexit, it is job done. Failing Grayling wears his hopelessness as a badge of honour. A man who lives and breathes the Samuel Beckett maxim: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” An inspiration to the mediocre that complete catatonia is within their grasp. Even without the use of performance decreasing drugs.

The Brexit secretary certainly appeared immensely grateful to Grayling, as he was called to the dispatch box to answer an urgent question on what progress the government had made in its renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement since it pulled the vote several weeks before Christmas. Stephen Barclay had previously never dared to dream of being anything more than the nonentities’ nonentity and finding himself in the cabinet has prompted an identity crisis. He now affects the swagger of a somebody but has the personality and intelligence of a nobody.

Still, knowing next to nothing about anything is no real disadvantage when it comes to the Brexit negotiations as no one else in government has a clue either, so Barclay was free to make things up as he went along. There had been some progress and there again there hadn’t been some progress, he said gnomically, while repeatedly reassuring himself under his breath that at least he wasn’t Failing Grayling. There might be some news by Wednesday and if there wasn’t, then there might be by a following Wednesday. “I’m not Chris Grayling, I’m not Chris Grayling,” he mumbled, dying on his feet.

Jeremy Corbyn was more relaxed about Barclay not being Grayling. His fury was directed at Barclay not being Theresa May. The Labour leader had directed his question at the prime minister and it was a dereliction of duty she had sent a stand-in instead. It’s a sign of the general levels of Brexit madness that Corbyn believed he had lost out by not getting May’s version of events. No one has ever come away better informed about anything after 90 minutes in the company of the prime minister.

Apart from being angry about May’s absence, Corbyn wasn’t quite sure what he was actually angry about. All he knew for certain was that he was definitely angry. He shouted a bit, stumbled over his script – it was his first day back since Christmas so a little rustiness was to be expected – and generally demanded levels of clarity that were well beyond anything he could offer himself. The Labour leader might even have been taking lessons off Grayling.

What followed was an exercise in futility. Sensibly, no members of the DUP even bothered to turn up. With just 81 days till Brexit, parliament is still quite happy to waste its own and the country’s time. Barclay managed to both confirm that the prime minister would and wouldn’t present her new legal agreement before the debate restarted on Wednesday and that the vote would and wouldn’t definitely go ahead next week.

Not that anyone was listening. Or cared. Everyone who had always promised to vote against the deal anyway, merely confirmed they would do so regardless of what May said or did. “We have no plan,” wailed Labour’s Barry Sheerman. “We have no purpose.” He wailed for all of us. Though quite why it has taken him so long to realise this is a mystery.