Like a shameless loyal hand to Queen Cersei, Olly Robbins has returned to Brussels for more pointless Brexit talks

Technically it qualifies as a headline, but it reads more like a crude schoolboy parody of nihilistic pointlessness.

“Olly Robbins heads to Brussels,” the BBC website reported last night. By now, the prime minister’s chief EU negotiator will have arrived for what are drolly styled as “further talks”.

No one knows much about this civil servant, other than that at Oxford, where he was presciently nicknamed “Sir Humphrey”, he ran a club devoted to a federal European Union; that he’s been ever present at Theresa May’s side through her ubershambles; that he’s tall and has a vague facial resemblance to Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk; and that at a precocious 44, he has a spectacular Whitehall future behind him.

We also know that, for a typically secretive mandarin, he has a startling knack for having his secrets broadcast.

On heading to Brussels in February, Robbins was overheard in a bar by a TV news reporter outlining May’s endgame blackmail strategy to delay the dodo deal vote until the last moment.

“If they don’t vote for the deal,” Robbins said, possibly in a stage whisper, “then the extension is a long one.”

Meanwhile, in a BBC documentary last week, former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit negotiator, revealed that Robbins asked him if he could become a Belgian citizen because he can’t face coming back here once this process is complete.

If it didn’t play brilliantly with the ultras, most of us won’t blame him for that. Who isn’t absolutely desperate for an EU passport these days?

Whenever I meet an Irish person, I ask after maiden aunts with marriage on their minds back in County Clare.

The nominal purpose for Robbins heading to Brussels today is to discuss how quickly the political declaration about the UK’s relationship with the EU could be reworked if May and Jeremy Corbyn agree a deal.

That should take 30 seconds. Robbins knows that May and Corbyn will not agree a deal. Everyone knows that.

Admittedly, this time last week, everyone knew that Liverpool would not overturn a 0-3 deficit to Barcelona, and everyone knew at half time the following night that Tottenham would not do the same to Ajax.

But Liverpool and Spurs wanted to pull off those miracles, whereas May and Corbyn are palpably going through the motions because the form demands it.

Robbins is heading to Brussels for the same cosmetic reason. In practical terms, he would as usefully be heading for Muscat, Taipei, or Port-au-Prince.

So, once the 30 seconds have elapsed, and his hosts have paid him the courtesy of listening to whatever he presents as the will of Her Majesty’s government, you hope they acknowledge the futility and decide to do something more productive.

That might be a goodwill visit to the chocolate museum, or to one of those monasteries where the monks brew beers that taste of decomposing wheat, or possibly to the Manneken Pis, the bronze statue of a boy peeing in the fountain.

An outing to Mini-Europe, a theme park featuring 1:25 scale reproductions of monuments from 80 EU cities, would be unbearably poignant for a Europhile like Robbins. But at least he could have preliminary talks about repatriating mini-Big Ben when we leave.

Whatever amusement takes his fancy, literally not a thing Robbins could imaginably do in Brussels today would be as complete a waste of time as “further talks”.

If he had the courage of the conviction he shared with Verhofstadt, he wouldn’t come back.

He was probably joking about the Belgian passport, just as he was probably being cute when he blurted the May meisterplan in the hearing of a reporter, to put the threat of a long Brexit delay in the public domain.

But many a true word in jest, and all that. You understand why a man who has long dreamed of leading the civil service would be in despair.

What he’ll be coming back to, after all, is King’s Landing on the eve of its destruction. In this dismal version of Game of Thrones, he is Qyburn, the hand of Queen Cersei (May).

He’s been loyally at her side through it all, offering supportive counsel as she’s insisted she could defy the inevitable by forming alliances with her enemies.

Even with the dragon visible in the sky, and her country aflame, he has stood behind her on the balcony as she surveyed the horror with that knowing grin of demented self-delusion still plastered on her chops.

I’ve no idea who Daenerys is in this analogy, let alone which of the pretenders will end up on the Iron Throne. But I am fairly sure that being the last surviving loyalist of a doomed and hated ruler isn’t a promising career position.

You don’t need anyone accidentally on purpose giving away spoilers in a Brussels bar to know how this one ends.

Winter is coming for Robbins, as for us all. So in the absence of a personal relationship with Guy Verhofstadt, I make the appeal. If anyone has a widowed grandmother in Vilnius with an urge to remarry and a curious taste for portly English sea monsters…