The monstrous teenagers of our Brexit government are sorely testing the patience of the adults in the room

Could this have been the Cummings-Johnson masterplan all along – make the EU so infuriated that someone, anyone, will veto an extension?

After three years of endlessly asking what is wrong with us, the psychiatric questioning shifts across the Channel to ask what is wrong with them?

The EU 27 have tolerated the cocky abuse with astounding reserves of the patience, courtesy and unity that emigrated from these parts a while ago. It starts to look like some form of self-abusive mental disorder.

They have turned deaf ears to being styled as Nazis to the Remainers’ appeasers, to the rancorous paralysis of successive Tory governments, and to the infantile imperial fantasising of the ERG.

Like the stoic parents of the horribly entitled teenager who never asked to be born, they have soaked up all the rudeness and aggression in the hope that it’s a transient phase on the meandering road to adulthood.

But there comes a point when even the most indulgent parents can delude themselves no longer, and must accept that whatever the agony of chucking the monster out is a price worth paying to protect the other family members and their own sanity.

How close are we to that? The received wisdom is that even now, despite the odd dark rumbling from the French and Latvians, none of the 27 is quite ready to kick us out.

Any one of them could, simply by vetoing the request for an extension from Boris Johnson (should he see fit to obey the law of the land) or a proxy representative from the Muthah of Parliaments.

But the smug assumption is that none will break ranks and take the rap for the economic anguish a no-deal exit would visit on Ireland, and less dramatically on other EU countries.

You will have noticed that the smug assumption hasn’t been on sparkling political form in recent years. David Cameron complacently assumed the referendum would be easily won (he hoped for a 70-30 Remain landslide, as he reveals in his memoir). Hillary Clinton suicidally assumed Trump was too unelectable to justify her visiting the Rust Belt states.

Never assume, as the saying counsels, it makes a right twat out of you and me. The EU 27’s tolerance is visibly narrowing by the day.

We saw an acrid hint in Luxembourg on Monday, after the Hulk turned green at the prospect of expat heckling and, muttering “I hate you, I HATE you”, made the traditional door-slamming retreat to his room.

If Luxembourg prime minister Xavier Bettel’s byplay with the empty podium and unyoked fury about the continuing failure of someone to do any homework humiliated Boris the Teenager, it put the fear of bejeesus into this Remainer.

Bettel’s abandonment of the diplomatic niceties looked remarkably like the reaction of a parent who is one tantrum shy of breaking point.

It pays tribute to Johnson’s tremendous success in his campaign to reclaim absolute power over our own affairs that Bettel, the leader of a country with roughly the population of Bristol, has absolute power over our affairs.

The House of Commons can pass what legislation it wishes to outlaw no deal, and even replace Johnson with a caretaker mandated to take the trusty brush to Brussels and sweep up another extension.

But barring the nuclear option outlined below, nothing the Commons can do will matter a jot if Bettel or one of his 26 counterparts finally snaps.

Could this have been the Cummings-Johnson masterplan all along? Has the chaos they’ve unleashed and their contemptuous refusal to negotiate been a cunning blind, to divert attention to the Commons and the Supreme Court while they goad the EU into doing their work for them by vetoing an extension?

If that flatters their strategic intelligence, consider what an exquisite solution for them this would be. A monosyllable from one of the 27 (“non”), and they scoop the pot. Britain crashes out on Halloween, Farage’s Brexit Party spontaneously expires, the Lib Dems raison d’etre dies with it, and we’re back in a two-party scrap which Johnson, as the hero of Brexit, could expect to win handsomely.

Within a few years, Scotland and all those SNP MPs leave the union, and Northern Ireland reunites with the republic. The England and Wales that remains is a nasty, shrill, narrow right-wing client kingdom of the United States. It’s the very wettest of Johnson-Cummings dreams.

In the event of a veto, that nuclear option is for the Commons to pass a vote of no confidence in Johnson, and give Jeremy Corbyn a nominal majority to take to the Queen in time for him to revoke Article 50.

On various grounds, that’s one hell of a Hail Mary. It would test the strength of Jo Swinson’s commitment to Remain. She’d have to renege on the promise never to enable a Corbyn premiership, and would destroy herself in the process.

Corbyn would have to make the ultimate self-sacrifice since revocation would virtually guarantee a Tory win in the next general election. But in the event of a veto, it would be the only way to avoid no deal.

And a veto cannot by blithely discounted. If the patience of the 27 hasn’t wholly evaporated yet, here’s hoping a remark from the outgoing speaker evades their notice.

John Bercow warns that, regardless of the outcome in the coming weeks and months, the debate about the relationship with Europe will continue here for another 20 years. Would you blame Bettel, who looked like he couldn’t bear another 20 seconds, or any of them, for concluding that it’s high time to dump the poisonous little bleeder’s gear on the doorstep in bin bags, and change the locks?