This unhinged Brexit cabinet just keeps delivering the dodgy goods – no money back, no guarantee

Most long-running sitcoms feature a character of such astounding stupidity that the woke viewer is now and again unnerved by a question of taste.

Joey Tribbiani in Friends, The Vicar of Dibley’s Alice Tinker, Andy Dwyer in Parks and Recreation – however hard the writers might to sugar-coat the imbecility with sprinkles of childlike wisdom, at times you wonder about the dividing line between harmless amusement and mocking the afflicted.

This in mind, restraint seems appropriate in the matter of Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Maybe One Day Though God Alone Knows How Exiting the European Union (SoSMODTGAKHEEU).

In the almost 12 months since his appointment, Barclay’s lethal dullness – akin to the heavily sedated deputy director of parking permits in a subarctic Canadian hamlet – has caused him to remain an obscure supporting character in this sitcom.

His bid for promotion to the main cast has come late, and may not be enough. So long as the cabinet features Liz Truss, whose every pronouncement comes with a speech bubble reading, “That sounded way better in my... in my... well, somewhere”, don’t hold your breath for a vacancy for the superdummy portfolio.

Still, Barclay staked a decent claim on Monday before the House of Lords EU Select Committee. Under Boris Johnson’s deal, asked Lord Wood (former Gordon Brown adviser Stewart Wood as was, and one of the heroes of the resistance), will Northern Ireland businesses need to fill out export forms when they send goods to the British mainland?

That was not an arcane enquiry. The answer must have appeared, in bold type, on the page at the top of his red box pile. It’s crucial. It goes to the heart of the conundrum: will Britain treat Northern Ireland as a foreign country by imposing a customs border, with colossal implications not only for the DUP’s immediate voting intentions, but for the longer-term survival of the union?

If you’d asked Trigger from Only Fools and Horses to explain the application of quantum gravity to time travel, and specifically to the temporal paradoxes inherent in the Bootstrap Theory, he couldn’t have looked more bamboozled.

After recovering whatever pass for his wits, however, Barclay was very, very clear. No such forms would be needed, he explained, “because in terms of Northern Ireland to GB, we’ve said it will be frictionless”.

The tweak he later offered to that may seem trivial at a time when sweating the weeny Brexit stuff is the last thing anyone needs.

But purely for the record, he amended himself to the effect that, under the Johnson surrender deal, Northern Ireland firms will have to fill out these forms. And to think that I teased David Lammy for asserting on Celebrity Mastermind that Henry VIII was succeeded by his son Henry VII, and the surname of Nobel physics laureate Marie was Antoinette.

Restraint is important, as mentioned above, so let it be stated that by no means is Barclay unqualified. After a year as Brexit secretary, he is perfectly qualified to ring James O’Brien on LBC and be hilariously exposed for knowing less than nothing about Brexit.

But enough about Trigger, and on to Del Boy. Would you buy a second-hand withdrawal agreement – no money back, no guarantee – from Sajid Javid?

The bumptious chancellor with the Thatcher’s-child, City-boy swagger has such infectious confidence that I’m baffled to find that not everyone wants a dose of him.

For me, his bouncy demeanour makes it impossible to doubt that this time next year, if we can only GET IT DONE, we’ll all be millionaires. As the Saj and a fair smattering of his colleagues already are, many times over.

Contemplating the defining decision in modern British history, some people want to see the Treasury’s economic impact assessments. It’s almost as if they want some vague idea about the economic impact.

The nervous Nellies and doubting Thomases will forever be a plague. If The Saj says we needn’t bother our little heads with stuff like that, because the deal is “self-evidently in our economic interest”, that’ll do for me.

Self-evidence, after all, is a powerful force. Technically, it isn’t absolutely identical to evidence. It’s uncannily similar, yes, but with this one minuscule distinction. Evidence is impartial, clinical fact, often given under oath. Self-evidence is whatever someone chooses to say.

“I will never send a letter requesting an extension to Article 50” is one example of self-evidence. Others include “The easiest trade deals EVER” and “We’ve said it will be frictionless”. “The EU27 will crack because they need us much more than we need them” is yet another. I could go on. But I’m being annoyingly pedantic again, so I won’t.

If the Del Boy of the Treasury finds the self-evidence convincing, who wouldn’t take a used Brexit deal off him in a flash without so much as a glance at the documents? Come on, you know it makes sense!

I do not, cannot and will not believe that western democracy has known a cabinet anything like this one. For connoisseurs of stultifying idiocy, staggering ignorance and stupefying dishonesty, observing it is like an endless trip to Florence for a victim of Stendhal’s syndrome. You could faint from the overwhelming majesty of it all. You could literally faint.