Theresa May is doing so well with Brexit that EU leaders are now more enthusiastic about meeting with Jeremy Corbyn

You wouldn’t want these people in charge of discussions if you were kidnapped, would you?

It’s a sign of how well Theresa May is doing that EU leaders are more enthusiastic about meeting Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, than they are about dealing with the Government.

So top politicians and business figures of Europe are saying: “This chap’s spent his entire life dedicated to taking our wealth off us, and sharing it with the masses so we have to get a job sponging bird mess off the roofs of public buildings. But we’d still rather he was in charge of negotiations instead of these clowns and Boris sodding Johnson.”

A large part of the Conservative Party is now excited about the possibility of there being no deal at all with the EU. You wouldn’t want these people in charge of discussions if you were kidnapped, would you?

They’d say: “We’ve had a meeting with your captors about what they want for your release, and you’ll be delighted to know we argued among ourselves for an hour, told them being chained to a drainpipe in a basement means being chained to a drainpipe in a basement, and we couldn’t care less whether there’s an agreement or not.

“Apparently they’re executing you in the morning, but the main thing is we haven’t agreed to a bad deal – isn’t that marvellous?”

So every day a new group of economists produce a report that shows Brexit with no deal will make food double in price, and a custard cream will cost £14 and everyone’s garden will be overrun by lions – and David Davis replies: “But what the report DOESN’T take into account is that we are BRITAIN and we sunk the Armada and invented the hovercraft so STOP TALKING BRITAIN DOWN. We’ll THRIVE on our own because NO ONE makes banana and custard like the British – NO ONE.”

The summit itself probably involves Liam Fox making a speech about sovereignty, while the other European leaders look at their phones to check their emails, and show each other videos of the shots they did on a night out with the King of Belgium.

Because, to us, the world revolves around Brexit. We imagine the French are cancelling Christmas to discuss pickled onion tariffs with the UK after Brexit, Italian ministers are offering to dance for us if we keep buying their plum tomatoes, and drug gangs across Romania are terrified of the impact of Brexit on crack sales in the next tax year.

But if you glance at European newspapers, we barely get a mention. On news channels we’re in “Other news”, just after an item about a deli in Vienna which has produced Austria’s largest ever gherkin.

Maybe the Tories think they can deal with Europe in the same way they withhold money from their own citizens. They’ll tell Angela Merkel that they won’t even look at her claim unless she can prove she’s been to five interviews for other suitable jobs, such as beefeater, Argonaut and terrorist.

And she’ll tell the French they have no right to demand any payments as they’ve got Charles de Gaulle, who is clearly fit for work and could get a job as a celebrity speedbump in a back street in Nice.

When Europe does engage with us, we answer with a series of shouty phrases copied from the front pages of newspapers over the last 30 years.

Even Philip Hammond, seen as the nerdy one who isn’t angry enough about Europe, called the people he’s supposed to be negotiating with “the enemy”, as if they all have to be anti-Europe in the most infantile way they can think of – or risk being deselected by their local party.

As the French outline their schedule for the talks, the British delegation will hum “Waterloo” and Chris Grayling will walk across to the map on the wall and draw a knob over Portugal.

The Prime Minister suggests we might offer no rights to EU citizens in the UK, which apart from any moral question suggests she’s been misinformed about whether there are any British citizens living in Europe.

But not to worry, because obviously if there is no deal, the French and Spanish won’t consider at all the possibility of retaliating in any way – if European history teaches us anything, it’s that when one country acts in a belligerent way towards lots of others, no one much seems to mind.

Over the last 30 years especially, economies have thrived the most if they’ve made themselves isolated. So China has failed miserably by opening itself up to the world, whereas countries that have cut themselves off in the past, such as apartheid South Africa and communist Europe, have boomed and boomed with wealth and joy.

All the logic works in the Conservative Party’s favour. Europe will have to give us what they want, because we’re BRITAIN, and they never gave us what we wanted when we were members, which is why we’re leaving, so now they’re bound to give us what we want when we’re not members.

It’s the same with a job. If you’re a painter and decorator and ask for a pay rise, and never get one, the best thing is to leave the job altogether, then a couple of years later your old boss will give you double your old salary, even though you don’t work there at all, and now sell beach balls and surfboards out of a hut in Cornwall.

Yet somehow Theresa May clings on, like the rust that stops an old car from collapsing, with each side of the Conservative Party scared to give it too much of a push. She may be rotten but she’s all that’s preventing the whole structure from falling into a pile of flaky, hopeless dust.