And now he has been giving us the benefit of his wisdom on "what we want to achieve from those Brexit negotiations". The Prime Minister's Lancaster House speech in January, he said, "had set out clearly the arrangements that the UK would like to agree, built around a comprehensive trade agreement in the context of a deep and special partnership that goes much wider than trade".

But, said the Chancellor, "we recognise that this is a negotiation, and our negotiating counterparts, while broadly sharing our desire for a close ongoing relationship, will have their own priorities". As to our own priorities, we must be "clear" about them. When the British people voted last June, they did not vote to become poorer, or less secure, but they did vote to leave the EU. And we will leave the EU.

But, Hammond declared, "it must be done in a way that works for Britain. In a way that prioritises British jobs, and underpins Britain's prosperity". He added: "Anything less will be a failure to deliver on the instructions of the British people". This brought us to the moment we'd all been waiting for: how we were going to achieve what the Chancellor called "Brexit for Britain".

Firstly, he said, we would secure "a comprehensive agreement for trade in goods and services". Secondly, we would negotiate "mutually beneficial transitional arrangements". These would "avoid unnecessary disruption and dangerous cliff edges". 

Thirdly, said our miracle worker, we would agree "frictionless customs arrangements to facilitate trade across our borders – and crucially – to keep the land border on the island of Ireland open and free-flowing".

To achieve this last miracle, "in the context of our wider objectives" would, said Hammond, "be challenging". It will almost certainly involve, "the deployment of new technology". Therefore, he added, "we'd certainly need an implementation period, outside the Customs Union itself".

To allow this, current customs border arrangements would remain in place until new long-term arrangements were up and running. And then finally, Mr Hammond had one big trump card. He was going to take a "pragmatic approach" to one of our most important EU export sector – financial services.

This would need "a new process for establishing regulatory requirements for cross-border business between the UK and EU". This would have to be "evidence-based, symmetrical, and transparent" and "reflect international standards".

Cooperation arrangements had to be "reciprocal, reliable, and prioritise financial stability". Crucially these had to enable "timely and coordinated risk management on both sides". Third, these arrangements have to be permanent and reliable for the businesses regulated under these regimes.

As far as migration goes, Mr Hammond would have us seeking to manage it. We would not seek to shut it down. But, beyond that, no detail was offered. This, though, was the tenor of the entire speech. One could not say it was "wishy-washy" – just "wishy". The speech was long on aspiration but entirely lacking in execution.

Yet, despite this, the Chancellor was "confident" that we could do "a Brexit deal that puts jobs and prosperity first". This would be a deal that "reassures employers that they will still be able to access the talent they need", one that "keeps our markets for goods and services and capital open" and one that would achieve "early agreement on transitional arrangements".

And in this lovely, fluffy, cuddly Brexit that Mr Hammond has invented for us, "trade can carry on flowing smoothly, and businesses up and down the country can move on with investment decisions that they want to make, but that have been on hold since the Referendum".

I seem to recall writing earlier about my aspirations for gaining the exclusive franchise for Lunar Green Cheese, with a quota of 1000 tons a week, beamed down directly from the Sea of Tranquillity by a matter transporter. But, it appears, Mr Hammond has beaten me to it. In Brexit terms, he's cleaned out the pool.

There is no going back from this. Either we have a minister here with hidden depths, a man who all this time has been sitting on a brilliant plan, the like of which the world has never seen, or we're dealing with yet another Walter Mitty character, living in a parallel universe, and not even the same one as Mrs May.

Particularly interesting is that Hammond too has joined the ranks of the "transitionals". Having caught up with the rest of the world, in understanding that we cannot conclude Mrs May's "deep and special partnership" inside the period allocated, he has embraced the idea that everything can be solved by "mutually beneficial transitional arrangements".

What nobody is admitting, least of all Mr Hammond, is that a transitional agreement is not quick fix. He, like the others, should have appreciated that the complexity is such that the two-year Article 50 period is barely (if at all) sufficient to craft such an agreement.

Looking at the most recent member of the European Union, Croatia, we see that it applied for membership in 2003 and was in negotiations from 2005 until 2011. The 116-page accession treaty was signed on 9 December 2011.

The essence of accession treaty is that it is (to a very large part) a transitional agreement, easing the entry of a joining nation into the Union. That is takes six years is a good indication of how long these things can take and it is not at all untoward to imagine a transitional agreement with the UK taking those two years that Article 50 allows.

The very fact that so many are leaping on this transition bandwagon is in itself and indication that they are little idea of what is involved. Having already wasted so much time, it is questionable whether there is even time to complete a basic agreement.

Hammond, coming to the party late, is playing games. There is nothing anywhere to indicate that his "ideas" have any more substance than the words in his speech, which were pathetically thin. He has joined the ranks of politicians selling their phoney Brexits. That is all these people have to offer.