No one’s sure what they want in this Brexit mess

The most dramatic, momentous, unpredictable and significant of days in British political history?

Sixteen years as a lobby correspondent taught me they occur with surprising and frightening regularity.

Fast-shifting crisis is almost the resting state of Westminster politics – to the delight of those paid to report it.

Many fade quickly but some endure.

This week’s events – which by chance coincided with a brief foray back to my old stomping ground – have the feel of a drama worthy of far more than a historical footnote.

The set piece occasion, Theresa May’s Commons statement, was among the most extraordinary of its kind I can remember.

Three full hours defending a policy almost no MP expressed any real appetite for – the Prime Minister included.

Member after member standing up to tell her the dish she had served was clearly inedible, while she wolfed mouthfuls of it and half smiled through gritted teeth.

Perhaps she was training for gobbling grubs – with growing numbers wanting her “out of there”, one wag suggested, she would be gone in time to join the celebs in the jungle.

Or maybe – knowing that beyond the door, Jacob Rees-Mogg was brandishing a knife as sharp as the crease in his impeccable suit – she thought the only way to stay in office was never to sit down again.

In such frenzied spells of political turmoil, the focus, and the cameras, shift constantly from the chamber to the street and personality to personality as pieces of a fiendishly complex puzzle gradually reveal the final picture.

The problem here is that it’s unclear any of the main players know what they want it to look like.

Making head or tail of what people are doing when they are unsure themselves is a Herculean task for journalists on the Westminster beat.

Confident predictions of what happens next are in essence guesses – albeit very educated ones – and rarely prove entirely correct.

It has been a real treat to dip back into the thrill of that world again. But, when it comes to untangling the mess Brexit has become, I will admit a slight sense of relief to be heading back north and leaving them to it.