A government of national unity might be the only way out of this Brexit crisis – but imagine that with today’s lot

It would be a coming together of none of the talents, of course, but at least we might have a functioning administration

Don’t feel ashamed if this comes as news to you, but this country boasts an entity called “the government”.

I didn’t realise myself until this morning. I had been vaguely aware of a bunch of people in the SW1 postcode who squabble under the alleged authority of a crazy person who spouts gibberish neither she nor anyone else can possibly believe. But then, a few hours ago, I read this quote: “The government warned that the Monday night vote [for tomorrow’s indicative votes; the ones “the government” intends to ignore] had set a ‘dangerous, unpredictable precedent’.”

Well, I thought, once the shock faded, we can’t be having any of that. When everything’s running so smoothly – no danger on the farthest horizon; the future so easy to predict; crystal clear precedent followed to the letter – that would be folly.

But let’s suppose events took a dramatic turn. Imagine instead that the future is hanging by a frayed thread, with no one able to agree about what to do. With a paralysed “the government” staggering towards a calamity nobody but a few dozen imperial nostalgists and gentleman’s club armchair anarchists wants, what would be the way out?

Letting the Commons replace “the government” would, as I hope we established above, be ridiculous. In any parliamentary democracy that is bent on “reclaiming parliamentary sovereignty”, giving parliament any influence is too daft for words.

Asking the populace is even sillier: if the people decided one thing almost three years ago, and if respecting their will is paramount, what could be more brazenly illogical than asking them if they’ve changed their mind? It couldn’t matter less if every opinion poll shows they have, in fact, reached the opposite conclusion to the previous one, and by a more decisive margin. Once expressed, the people’s will is set in stone. That’s why the result of a general election can never be reversed by another. Ever.

Another potential escape route is replacing the supposed leader of “the government” with someone less absolutely mistrusted here, and right across the EU from Dublin to Riga. This seemed imminent on Sunday, before common sense reasserted itself.

As various cabinet ministers insisted, almost verbatim as if from a script, changing the leader would change nothing. Of course it wouldn’t. When plainly the most crucial leadership quality is negotiating flexibility, what difference could it make if a new chief negotiator was less pathologically inflexible than the old one?

Yet another other possible deadlock-breaker is the general election, as favoured by a mere 12 per cent in the latest poll. The prime minister won’t countenance letting the country reconsider a question from June 2016, but “the government” is reportedly war-gaming an election asking them to reconsider the question from May 2017. That, without the sledgehammer irony, truly would be demented when every poll points to an eerily similar parliamentary balance. An election’s grandest achievement would probably be squandering more time.

Having eliminated the preposterous, as Sherlock didn’t quite put it, whatever remains, however absurdist, must be the best option. So, to Anna Soubry’s call for “a government of national unity” as the way to carve peace from this proxy war. A kissing cousin to “a government of all the talents”, there hasn’t been a “GoNU” since the war.

It worked fine back then, because everyone in it was pretty sure about the result they wanted, but also because it featured two political titans, Winston Churchill and his Labour deputy Clement Attlee. They came from disparate political traditions, but worked together to help avoid an existential threat.

How would a GoNU work now? It’s hard to be romantically optimistic. If it included members from every parliamentary grouping, as inclusivity demands, the Attlee du jour might refuse to attend cabinet meetings in person. If Chuka Umunna got the nod for the Independent Group, Jeremy Corbyn would avoid attending Cabinet meetings in person. He might consent to appear by satellite link, like an absentee award winner, from his office a five-minute walk away. Or he might not.

In this game of political fantasy football, forget Andrea Leadsom’s Pizza Club. It would be a replay of that Arsenal vs Man Utd pizza brawl – only here the brawling would begin in the tunnel as the teams walked out, and not as they trooped off.

And yet, assuming May could feign a personality transplant and Corbyn be persuaded to don those “big boy” pants, it does look like the least hideous very short term option. It would recognise that in a country as split as its political class, even Remain-leaning Scotland and Northern Ireland have a right to be heard. The millions who voted Liberal Democrat and Plaid Cymru might relish the input. On this, as on all things, the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas is a wise voice.

If “the government” means it when it says it wants us all to “come together” when this captivating experiment in applied chaos theory is over, it would be a useful first step. The second would be a written constitution to ensure nothing like this ever recurs, but that’s one for another day.

On this day, on the eve of the indicative votes likely to indicate nothing more than May’s slight tendency to be intransigent, Soubry’s suggestion appeals beyond the gruesome hilarity. It would be a government of national disunity, of course, and of almost none of the talents. But there is a slither of a chance that it would at least be a government.