Hard to see the funny side of Parliament's panto antics

The Prime Minister had promised to resign if she can get her Brexit deal through, prompting senior Tories who hated the blessed thing to fall over themselves in a race to announce they would now back it (Boris beat Raab to the punch, for those who are keeping score).

MPs had put forward eight possible Brexit alternatives and decided they didn't much like any of them, and the DUP had done what the DUP does best: dug its heels in and refused to budge.

But there was still ample time for our politicians' Brexit shame to find new depths to plunge.

The results of the largely pointless indicative votes were greeted with gales of laughter from all around the House, with a number of Tory MPs pictured jovially digging each other in the ribs as they marvelled at the hilarity of it all.

Presumably they were reflecting on the utter ineptitude of their collective efforts at delivering a Brexit deal, reasoning that "if you don't laugh, you'll cry". Even Commons Speaker John Bercow let out a guffaw.

It was disgraceful behaviour, one MP from the same benches told me today, opining that they had "carried on like there was something to celebrate".

Then Anna Soubry stood up to speak. The ultra-Remainer, who quit the Tories over the Government's approach to Brexit, is a dab hand at rubbing people up the wrong way – particularly those who want out of the EU.

But whether people agree with her or not, does she "deserve to be heard", to use the aforementioned Speaker's parlance?

She absolutely does.

Ms Soubry certainly did not warrant the response from the Labour side of the House, where MPs jeered her with sixty seconds worth of abuse that would have sounded more at home down the road at Millwall's football ground.

"The country is watching this," she said when finally able get a word in.

It was a thoroughly depressing moment, and perhaps for the first time in her parliamentary career Ms Soubry was speaking for the masses.

Thirty-three months since the country voted to leave the EU and the Commons has become a pantomime, a tragic backdrop to a broken political system that is largely incapable of making a decision of any consequence.

While parliamentarians laugh, jostle and jeer, an increasingly frustrated public looks on in horror.

For those of us out here in the real world, who are simply waiting for the referendum result to be respected and delivered, seeing the funny side is not so easy.