The UK did not vote to leave the customs union and single market, no matter what David Davis says

David Davis is right to claim the people have given their verdict on leaving the customs union and the single market, but it happened in June of this year, not last

The graver the situtation, the harder Davis laughs (Getty)

It would be a great service to our democracy if all elected officials were made to wear electric-shock collars that activate each time they said something demonstrably, unequivocally untrue.

Firstly it would, in theory, discourage MPs from saying things they know to be untrue, but there would be further secondary benefits too.

Since the rise of time-shifted TV, climactic episodes of EastEnders and their subsequent mass rush to the kettle can no longer be counted upon to provide regular stress tests of the National Grid, that crucial task could be undertaken via David Davis’s regular statements to the House of Commons on Brexit.

This is not to suggest Davis himself is solely to blame. Indeed, so regular and repeated are the same untruths constantly told by the same people it already bears every outward resemblance to some kind of perversion to which the addition of on-demand electrocution risks making matters worse.

To be clear: David Davis. Jacob Rees-Mogg. Bernard Jenkin. Listen. On the 23 June 2016 the United Kingdom did not vote to leave the customs union and the single market. That. Did. Not. Happen. Now, we can all accept that you really, really, really wish it did happen. No one is doubting the sincerity or the depth of your own desires, but that does not make them true. No matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t make it true.

The context of all this: on Tuesday lunchtime, Davis was called to the despatch box to give an explanation to the deal or no deal chaos that unfolded in Brussels, Belfast, London and Dublin yesterday. Theresa May arrived in Brussels hoping to announce an agreement with the EU on the Irish border issue, only to find it vetoed by her own partners in government, the Democratic Unionist Party. As Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer pithily put it, it is one thing to fall out with those on the other side of negotiating table; quite another to fall out with your own side.

Indeed it is. Davis sought to pre-but all this by laughing it off in his usual manner. The graver, the situation, the harder Davis laughs. Thank goodness the territorial SAS never sent him on active service, or you can imagine the man dissolving into levels of hysterics not seen since Ian Botham failed to get his leg over on Test Match Special.

At the heart of the question, you’ll know, is the vaguely and wrongly floated idea that Northern Ireland might remain in the customs union and single market after Brexit, which the DUP has made clear it doesn’t want but London, Scotland, Grimsby, various towns around Dover and the car industry do.

“The idea of leaving one part of the United Kingdom behind, that is emphatically not what we are doing.” Davis said. Absolutely not. The whole of the United Kingdom is coming out of the single market and the customs union.

Bernard Jenkin reminded the house that last June “the people didn’t vote for some half-in, half-out solution”, by which, as ever, he means Bernard Jenkin didn’t vote for some half-in, half-out solution, and as to the wider motivations of the other 17.5 million people, he has no idea.

Jacob Rees-Mogg rose to make the point that “regulatory divergence is an indelible red line”. In other words, that peace and stability in Northern Ireland is a small sacrifice to lay upon the altar of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s private Brexit-related fantasies.

Representative democracy and referenda go together like oil and water, that much has been clear for a while now. And although it’s far too late for this particular crowd to acknowledge the words written on the ballot paper last June were not what they imagined them to be, you’d think it mightn’t be too hard for them to remember a few words repeated, ad infinitum by their own party leader and Prime Minister far more recently than that.

For they are right that leaving the single market and the customs union has indeed been put before the people, not yet six months ago. “Strengthen my hand in the negotiations with Brussels,” Theresa May said, over and over and over again, and on this explicit question, the people passed their verdict, and we are left where we are.

By the way, every development in the Brexit process that tilts the UK further toward hard Brexit can be spotted via a drop in the pound, and this latest Brussels farrago was no exception. Eventually, the penny might drop too. But not yet.