Brexit is breaking the country and it’s breaking parliament. All that remains are tired minds and tired bodies. None more so than Theresa May’s: the prime minister is running on fumes. Backed into a corner by a toxic cocktail of her own party, her own intransigence and her own incompetence, she can now barely remember her own name. The one thing keeping her in a job is that everyone else is in an almost equally pitiful state. All eyes are on the exits. Even the Four Pot Plants can’t wait for recess.

In her statement to the Commons on Wednesday night’s EU Council summit, the Leader in Name Only made no pretence at doing anything other than going through the motions. After registering her delight that the Ecuadorian embassy had finally tired of Julian Assange – the only thing that generated any real excitement on the Tory benches all day – she merely did a rehash of the press conference she had given the previous night. Which in turn had been a rehash of every other statement and press conference she has given over the previous six months.

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The EU and the UK had agreed an extension to the extension. They hadn’t of course. What had happened was the other 27 leaders of the EU had agreed the terms of the extension between themselves and then told the UK what it was being given. But nobody could get sufficiently worked up to actually call May out on this, so her version went unchallenged. If she wanted to maintain her little fantasies, then MPs were happy to indulge her.

But no one should be too worried about the extension, Lino insisted. Yes, she was aware that she had said she wouldn’t ask for this one, just as she had said she wouldn’t ask for the one she had asked for two weeks previously, but really it was all a total irrelevance. Because she was still entirely confident that the House would agree to her deal in the next few weeks, so we wouldn’t even need to take part in the European elections. Brexit was just a heartbeat away if only MPs would do what she wanted. She’s got a lot to learn about how to get her needs met in couples’ counselling.

There was one brief nod to the reality of the situation when she admitted that the other EU countries were getting a wee bit fed up with her, but then she spoiled it by saying: “This is not the normal way of British politics.” Except it is precisely the new normal of British politics. Nobody expects anything but broken promises and inertia. We’ve reached the point where inertia is now everyone’s safe state. It’s the thought of the government actually doing something that is really terrifying. Because you know if it does then it will screw things up. The first law of clusterfuckery.

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In reply, Jeremy Corbyn was also content to pootle on auto-pilot. A tattered script from which he had read so many times before. It was a bit much for Lino to insist Labour that agree an instant consensus with the Tories when the government had spent the past three years fighting with itself. But it would act in good faith –possibly – if May was prepared to compromise. Lino looked appalled at the idea. The whole point of compromise was that it was something the other side did.

The backbench contributions were equally anodyne and bloodless. Some loyal Tories stood up to say they wanted to teach the world to sing and why couldn’t everyone just get along and agree the prime minister’s deal so everyone could be happy, while various Labour MPs went through their familiar second referendum and single market routines. All passion spent. This was protest as homeopathy. The memory of protest. The deluded Kate Hoey harked back to the Malthouse Compromise. She hasn’t yet realised even Kit Malthouse has given up on the Malthouse Compromise.

Even the Tory Brexiters, such as Bill Cash, John Baron, Steve Baker and Mark Francois, couldn’t manage more than faux outrage, their cries of treachery and calls for May’s resignation little more than hollow echoes. Everyone just wanted to run for the hills. Anywhere, so long as it was far away from Westminster. This had been the Potemkin Debate. Broken records in Broken English. A session of abject futility that had taken place purely to convince the world of the Commons’ existence. And one by one the Potemkin villagers scuttled away until there was just one MP talking to himself. Then silence.



