IT’S a long, long time for May till November, as Maxwell Anderson didn’t put it, not having had the foresight to imagine a prime minister who would only now be getting round to telling Whitehall to start preparing for what happens if we don’t get a Brexit deal.

But then Theresa May’s lack of preparedness, urgency and failure to consider what might happen if she doesn’t get her own way are only specific aspects of her general uselessness. A couple of years ago, there were probably only a few dozen people who would have argued that an entirely detached position, with the UK having no initial arrangements of any sort with the EU, and operating on a kind of Singaporean or Hong Kong free-trade model, was desirable.

It’s still, whatever its apparent ideological merits to buccaneering free marketeers, very much a minority view. Whatever is claimed for the legacy of Thatcherism, the rise of globalisation and the influence of “neoliberalism” (a meaningless word for any bits of capitalism you don’t approve of) none created a majority, or even a particularly significant following, for the kinds of pure market doctrines advanced by the Mont Pelerin Society, the Institute for Economic Affairs, Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies or Taxpayers’ Alliance.

That, however, is no excuse for not having considered it as a possibility. Once the Prime Minister – for reasons that still seem inexplicable – triggered Article 50 and immediately ruled out numerous plausible options, ending up with no deal was always something which could theoretically happen.

Its likelihood was greatly increased if negotiations were to be directed, for example, by the kind of person whose strategic skills were so inept that she could throw away a perfectly viable majority, convince even her own supporters that she was unfit for office, and generally give the impression that she couldn’t run a bath.

Anyway, orders have now been given that, in the second week of November – ages away – there will be a flurry of activity to gear us up for the several hundred thousand little bits of legislation on piffling details like the legal status of EU nationals, and the technical requirements of customs brokerage, which will be necessary if no deal is agreed.

The First Minister is “increasingly concerned”. On Wednesday, Ms Sturgeon said that she thinks “literally with every day that passes right now, that the prospect of no deal is becoming ever greater”. Yet even something that Ms Sturgeon believes could, nonetheless, turn out to be true.

Others in what might be called the Henny-Penny Tendency are even more forthright in their view that “the lifts are faun”. Or, at any rate, that the planes will fall out of the skies, chickens will be unavailable or bathed in chlorine, the lights will go out and the supply of all commodities and services, from medicines to universities, will grind to a halt.

This is the moment where it has to be pointed out that these are the people who promised us that a Leave vote would immediately (before Brexit was implemented) result in unemployment going up by 500,000, when it in fact fell to its lowest level since 1975. It would cause a “recession with four quarters of negative growth” (there was growth, and by more than Eurozone growth, every quarter). A huge rise in interest rates (they fell). An exodus of foreign firms, manufacturing investment, capital and overseas students (all of those areas increased after the vote).

Their spectacular wrongness to date doesn’t, of course, guarantee that they are wrong when they assure us that a “no deal” exit will definitely lead to a UK that looks like a series of scenes from Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. The formbook suggests otherwise, though.

It does, however, seem likely that, precisely because we have been so completely enmeshed in the regulations and restrictions of the project of “ever-closer union”, at least since the Treaties of Maastricht and Lisbon, that no deal at all will cause significant short-term problems. Given the Government’s record, it also seems likely – more than likely – that this “acceleration of preparations” scheduled to start on November 12 won’t get us ready for everything a sharp exit would entail.

Even if the disruption would be anywhere near as comprehensive and damaging as the Chicken Licken mob believe, however, that shouldn’t blind us to the possibility that Mrs May’s deal might be even worse. We already know, after all, than it’s worse than an Efta deal (in the single market, out of the customs union), worse than the Canada +++ variant trade deal offered by the EU, and worse than the proposals David Davis’s team advocated, which she blithely over-ruled.

So it might easily be worse than no deal at all. If nothing else, temporary shortages, supply chain difficulties or queues at ports would compel a future government (presumably we would have got rid of Mrs May) to take rapid and radical steps.

It might turn out that those measures – unilaterally agreeing not to levy any tariff or non-tariff barriers on imports, say, or scrapping domestic regulations that make UK businesses uncompetitive – could be just the kind of thing which would force the country to take a more trade-based, internationalist approach. Precisely the medicine, in other words, needed to gain the benefits of trade with the rest of the world beyond the EU customs union.

What would be incredibly foolish would be to focus only on the prospects for the immediate impact of no deal. Even if this long-overdue preparation is an essential measure to avert chaos, and even if the EU and Remain camps have not hysterically overstated the dangers, a no deal exit’s effects will be temporary.

We’d have a period of difficulty, but at least emerge in the end with the result that Brexit aimed for – the freedom to control our own economy, legislation and trade. Mrs May’s deal, if she can get it, has almost all the costs and restrictions of staying in the EU, while removing its advantages; it threatens the stability of the Union, stifles freedom of manoeuvre and embroils us for many years to come.

It’s unsatisfactory that, two years after decisively making a binary choice, we should have been painted into a corner which gives us another one – and between two options, neither of which most people wanted. But it’s still clear which option is better.