When it comes to Brexit, everything that can be tried will always fail

It is all beginning to feel like the closing scenes of the 1980 spoof comedy film Airplane! In particular the bit where, as the stricken jet is coming in to land, someone in the control tower suggests putting on the runway lights to help a little. ‘No,’ says Captain Rex Kramer, ‘that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do.’ The most basic explanation for the chaos in parliament is that the political divide in the House of Commons does not remotely match the political divide in the country, on Brexit or indeed on most issues, surely. But that shouldn’t stop us revelling in the multifarious paradoxes which have come as a consequence. (And don’t call me Shirley.)

Take Magic Grandpa. Here is a man who is deeply, viscerally and ideologically opposed to the European Union doing his level best to keep us in it. Mr Corbyn has also been demanding a general election — now! —when it is the very last thing he wants.