There are few innocent parties when it comes to this Brexit mess

A New Year and the same old mess, only with knobs on this time. If the government cannot be said to be distinguishing itself right now, its directionless meanderings are matched by those of the House of Commons as a whole. Brexit, we were often told, was a means by which ‘sovereignty’ could be restored to parliament in particular and, more generally, to the great British public itself. On the current evidence, you wouldn’t entrust a tombola to the House of Commons.

Last night the Commons demanded that the government avoid a no-deal Brexit. This was, if we are looking for something positive, mordantly amusing. But then gallows humour is about all that’s left to us in these hapless times. It remains staggering that so many MPs still refuse to accept that a no-deal Brexit is the default Brexit. It is the Brexit that happens in the absence of any other, agreed, Brexit.