The latest attempts to scare the EU about no-deal Brexit are growing more ridiculous by the day

The ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ bluff never worked on the EU, and neither will fake traffic jams

While MPs were away from Westminster, the Brexit news that dominated the national conversation was the awarding of a £14m shipping contract to a company that owns no ships.

On Monday morning, when parliament finally reconvened, it did so to the background mood music of a human-made, or rather government-made, artificial traffic jam on the road to Dover in Kent, dreamt up to show the EU we are serious about no-deal Brexit.

It might seem mad. And that is because it is indeed mad, but there is a curious method to the madness.

Should the UK leave the EU without a deal, something no one in the government wants, the disused Manston airfield near Ramsgate is earmarked to be used as an emergency lorry park with fully 6,000 spaces, to manage the backlog at Dover.

Government policy is to avert it, but to try and show the EU we are prepared for it, which we still mystifyingly seem to believe might extract more concessions from them in a negotiation that has been over for some time.

Which is why, shortly before dawn, 89 lorry drivers turned up for a day’s work and pay, courtesy of the government, to drive in convoy the 40-mile round trip to Dover and back, in an exercise almost artful in in its pointlessness.

We are not prepared for no-deal Brexit. We don’t want it. They don’t want it. We know that. They know that.

So it makes sense that this ridiculous PR exercise be performed as cheaply as possible. If the government were serious about no-deal Brexit, it would not have paid £14m to Seaborne Freight, the shipless shipping company with terms and conditions on its website which we now know to have been copy and pasted from a takeaway delivery company.

And it would not be putting on stress tests that are entirely without stress, and do not test anything.

No amount of transparently daft no deal planning will permeate the clear evidence that no-deal Brexit would be a disaster. The “no deal is better than a bad deal” bluff never worked on the EU.

This next phase, “we all know a no-deal Brexit will be terrible, but look – it might actually happen”, serves a different purpose. Which is to convince MPs to back Theresa May’s deal. We now know the meaningful vote on it will take place next Tuesday. We will see just how many have been taken in the world’s first travelling HGV circus. My guess? Not many.

Yours,

Tom Peck

Political sketch writer