ICEBERGS have been done, ditto tombstones. A shadowy figure running away from the scene of a crime, as in the “Watch out! There’s a thief about” ads of the 1970s, is too unsophisticated for today. Is there any way the UK Government can prepare the public for a no-deal Brexit without scaring the bejesus out of them? Or is that the whole point of the exercise?

Just when you thought there was no possible upside to crashing out of the EU without a deal, Theresa May has provided one in the shape of a mass advertising campaign to inform the public what might lie ahead. Some lucky ad agency will be getting a slice of the extra £2 billion (£55 million coming to Scotland) to be spent on contingency planning for a no-deal. Also on the upside, 3,500 soldiers know they will definitely be in a job come March 29, 2019. They do not know what they will be doing – keeping the traffic moving, keeping the peace – but they will be doing something. Manufacturers of giant fridges to store medicines have also bought a winning lottery ticket.

What was once unthinkable is now on the agenda in every sense. With the Cabinet on Tuesday giving the green light to full on preparation for no-deal, it only remained for Theresa May to formally brief the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland at yesterday’s Joint Ministerial Committee in Downing Street. She urged them to “pull together” behind her deal. It was an unfortunate choice of phrase, bringing to mind “We’re all in this together”, former Chancellor George Osborne’s war cry for austerity. Such audacity, too. The leader of the most disunited Tory party in memory – quite an achievement – urging unity.

There was nothing inevitable about any of this, and that remains the case today. Once again, the public is being treated as an afterthought, mere collateral damage in the Tories’ civil war, and the victim of Labour’s inability to organise a Christmas night out in a brewery.

From the reports of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting it is clear that most Ministers do not have a clue about the fear that is out there. You can see it everywhere. The UK is in “just in case” mode. People are reluctant to spend as much over Christmas just in case. They are holding off thinking about a holiday just in case. Putting a little extra away for the mortgage just in case. Have you been in a chemists lately? Noticed all the bags of prescriptions waiting to be collected? It is not the usual Christmas rush; the packages are too big for that. It can only be people on essential medication stocking up just in case some of the 37 million packs of medicine imported from the EU every month cannot get through.

Just in case the Government was failing to hear the alarm bells ringing, business organisations, including the CBI and the Institute of Directors, issued a joint statement saying firms had been “watching in horror as politicians have focused on factional disputes rather than practical steps that business needs”. That has been the story of Brexit since the referendum result was announced on the morning of June 24, 2016. Business has had to hang around like everyone else for Westminster to get its act together. Firms have been planning as best they can. The Government should have been engaged in the same advance planning. Instead, it has lurched from one self-inflicted disaster to another, only able to see as far ahead as the next few days or weeks.

We could comfort ourselves with the notion that all this contingency planning amounts to the mother and father of all bluffs. A hugely expensive bluff, but a bluff, designed to terrify MPs into backing Mrs May’s deal when a vote is finally held in January. Six months ago I might have agreed, but such is the degree of madness gripping Westminster I can see the worst possible outcome happening. For no-deal Brexit read brutal Brexit. Once upon a time you could rely on the Tories’ inbuilt desire to save their own skins to provide a reality check, but no more.

Not every Tory, however. One heartening development lies in the number of Conservative MPs who say they will resign the whip and vote with the opposition if a brutal Brexit is on the cards. One of them, Sarah Wollaston, a doctor, has said she could not remain a member of the Conservative Party if Mrs May changed her main policy objective to delivering no-deal and no-transition. “No responsible government,” she tweeted, “could knowingly aim to inflict that kind of harm on the people and especially when we are so woefully unprepared”.

No responsible government, for that matter, would publish an analysis, as the UK Government did last month, arguing that its citizens would be worse off under Brexit yet plough ahead anyway. But there we are.

Sitting around the same Cabinet table as Scotland’s First Minister yesterday was David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary. Mr Mundell, like Nicola Sturgeon, has urged the Prime Minister to hit the pause button on Brexit, via an extension of Article 50, in the hope of avoiding no-deal. But it is neither in her nature, nor her planning, to accommodate such a request. It has come down to her way, or the no-deal way.

Should Mrs May be defeated in January and still refuse to pursue an extension of Article 50, one presumes Mr Mundell will resign. Then again, he does have form in not resigning. If he was going to quit he would have done so when Mrs May’s EU withdrawal plan was published. Her deal, after all, crossed the red line, drawn by Mr Mundell and Ruth Davidson, of one part of the UK, Northern Ireland, being treated differently from the others.

The House of Commons rises today for Christmas, returning on January 7. One of its last acts yesterday was to have a row over whether Jeremy Corbyn called Theresa May a “stupid woman”, or muttered “stupid people” at the Conservative benches in general. Seriously? This is the priority?

Rarely can so many have been granted a break they do not deserve. Call off the search for scary monsters: the thought of a new year beckoning with the same old failures in charge is terrifying enough.