Theresa May stood up in parliament and said she had to 'honour her duty' to Brexit. She couldn't have been more wrong

Even at its most tedious, most repetitive hours, Brexit retains the capacity to surprise, to dream up new twists and conceits in this never-ending theatre of the absurd.

Today’s Best In Shitshow gong (there will be another tomorrow) goes unquestionably to Jeremy Corbyn, for antics so toweringly juvenile they are best summed up in a bulletpoint timeline.

2.45pm The Labour leader announces that if Theresa May does not give a date for the delayed meaningful vote, he will call for a highly obscure, technocratic and frankly meaningless vote of no confidence in her, that would not remove her from office

3pm (approx) The Labour leader receives an advance copy of Theresa May’s imminent Brexit statement to the House of Commons, which, in news that will have come as a shock to absolutely no one, contains the announcement that the delayed meaningful vote will now take place in the week beginning 14 January

3.30pm Theresa May reads this statement out at the despatch box

4.20pm The Labour Party announces “we have forced the PM to bring her botched Brexit deal back to parliament"

17.51pm Jeremy Corbyn tables meaningless vote of no confidence anyway. With days to go til Christmas recess, Theresa May will now have to decide whether or not to allocate parliamentary time to debate the question of her own uselessness

Since then, Labour politicians have appeared on the news channels to hammer this point at home, presumably for the benefit of whoever might be watching who also believes the world to be flat.

At a moment of acute national crisis, this is the kind of stuff that no student politician would dare, for fear of looking palpably ridiculous. And especially at the moment that Theresa May is, without any help from Labour at all, about to have to make herself look ridiculous all over again.

It was, as always, gruelling stuff in the House of Commons.

“Mr Speaker,” May began, “I would like to make a statement on last week’s European Council.”

And it was at this point, that I, for one, dared to daydream.

“It was, Mr Speaker, an international embarrassment. A joke. A full on 42-carat thermonuclear clustershambles. And whose fault is that?” At this point she may or many not have turned round and pointed her own MPs. “That’s right. Yours. I told you, at this exact time last week, that the backstop was no good, and I’d go and get some more concessions.

“I went and got those concessions. They were written down in black and white. And then you lot tried to oust me, and in Brussels, they decided, not without good reason, that frankly there was no point in conceding anything. Because whatever they give, you lot will just want more. So now there’s nothing. We are back where we started, the whole thing a waste of my time, your time and everybody else’s. But don’t try and pin this on me.”

Alas, that did not happen. What May instead said was that she had secured “a firm determination to work speedily on a subsequent agreement that establishes by 31 December 2020 alternative arrangements, so that the backstop will not need to be triggered.”

That should do it. That’ll sort it. Your average Tory Eurosceptic backbencher has only spent around 30 years being driven slowly mad by what he perceives to be the untrustworthiness of the European Union. Sure, they might have heard Emmanuel Macron threatening to force the UK into the backstop, and then use that as leverage to secure access to the UK’s waters for European fishing vessels. But even so, what more could they possibly want to finally wave Theresa May’s deal through than “a firm determination to work speedily on a subsequent agreement”?

Even she knew it wouldn’t do. She is long past the point of pretending. Mainly, she just warned them against giving the vote back to the people in a second referendum.

“The British people instructed us to to leave the European Union,” she said. “Now we must honour our duty to finish the job.”

Which is true, though on a personal note, I once recall a former flatmate instructing a kitchen fitter to fit a new kitchen. By the point at which it became apparent he was entirely unable to fit a kitchen, had never fitted any kitchen before, and was not actually a kitchen fitter, and the matter had been placed in the hands of the small claims court, even the kitchen fitter had reluctantly agreed he no longer had to “honour his duty to finish the job.”

Theresa May coming to the same, sad conclusion increasingly feels like a matter of when, not if.