Hurrah! The government, it was reported yesterday, is working on getting some more migrants. To plug a million-strong post-Brexit labour shortage in the hospitality sector, Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick have been instructed by Downing Street to start talks to open the doors to young French, German, Spanish and Swiss nationals.

If it goes well, the plan is to perhaps invite a few more to help out with farming, fish processing and all sorts of other sectors of the economy that are looking a bit peaky. ‘European baristas and au pairs could return to Britain under government scheme’, read the headline. Just like the good old days, eh?

What’s wrong with, say, Lithuanian au pairs and Polish hospitality workers? It remains a mystery

This seems eminently sensible to me, as I expect it will to many people. It’s a win-win. Brexit, whatever its many-splendoured virtues, has given a bit of a knock to our national supply of handsome, olive-skinned twentysomething Europeans prepared to make flat whites, sling croissants and serve chicken nuggets to the children of overstretched North London liberals. Meanwhile, our own pallid, knock-kneed twentysomethings, who didn’t have the maturity and long-term vision to vote for Brexit, have reportedly been feeling bitter that it has put a dent in their own chances of living and working in Europe.

This is a move that will reverse that and make everyone a bit happier. It’s a much-needed boost to a struggling sector of the labour market; and a sop, reciprocally, to the wanderlust of our own young.

It doesn’t even – calm down back there – need be seen as an example of how a demented national act of self-harm is being quietly, shamefacedly dismantled piece by piece without any of the people responsible admitting it. Rather, we could say, it’s a piece of fine-tuning: it’s an adjustment, of the sort we’re making and were always going to make, as a newly sovereign nation, to fit our interests. It’s an example, indeed, of just what the evangelists of Brexit promised they were going to do – to control our borders and decide for ourselves who we were going to let in (foxy Spanish baristas) and who we were not (drug-peddling Albanian dog-bangers).

But isn’t it wearying that we don’t say that, and that we can’t say that? Isn’t it a demonstration of how hard it is to do actual real-world politics these days that you can’t, simply, say: ‘Here’s a sensible policy that’s a win for all of us.’ It needs to be sold it to the opinion-strong, complexity-intolerant ideologues whose anger the Tory leadership still fears. That is, it’s being hedged around with all sorts of fudges and tripwires to keep it within broad-brush metrics that don’t, in themselves, tell us much about whether a policy is a good one.

There are two things that Braverman and Jenrick, at least in the way that this is reported, seem to be anxious about. The first is finding a way to let lots of young Europeans in in such a way that they don’t affect the net migration figures. The argument – which, as I’ve said, is as respectably a Brexity argument as could be made – was never about ‘keeping migrants out’: it was about taking back control as to which ones to let in.

In a sane world, you could say (for instance): ‘Hey, good news – net migration is up by 10 per cent, but instead of being 20 per cent foxy baristas and 80 per cent Albanian dog-bangers, it’s now 80 per cent foxy baristas and 20 per cent dog-bangers.’ But no. The terror, from those who feel strongly on the subject but don’t have the patience to think about the composition of migration as well as its size, is that a headline number going up will result in shrieks of betrayal.

Then there’s the idea that they might, as would seem perfectly sensible, want to open such a reciprocal youth mobility scheme to any of our former EU partners who had youth willing to travel. Thus, our potential pool of available labour would expand and, in turn, so would the number of places to which our own young people might be able to travel in search of work.

That would require us to do a deal with the whole EU – which would certainly be easier, it being a bloc, and might be the only way to do it at all – but heaven forbid it look like we’re backsliding and going cap in hand to Brussels. So instead, we’re told ‘Braverman and Jenrick are said to prefer agreements with individual countries. In particular, they want to negotiate agreements which would result in large numbers of French au pairs and Spanish hospitality workers’. What’s wrong with, say, Lithuanian au pairs and Polish hospitality workers? It remains a mystery.

It puts me in mind, a little, of a running joke from The A-Team. You might remember that B A Baracus – the beefy, gold-festooned, mohawk-sporting character played by Mr T – had an Achilles heel: he’d happily leap from a trench to knock the heads of two armed baddies together like coconuts, but he was terrified of flying.

He’d freak out as soon as someone tried to get him airborne. So when they needed to get him on a plane, they used post-hypnotic suggestion. Hannibal had ‘programmed’ him under hypnosis so that when he heard the word ‘eclipse’ he’d fall instantly fast asleep, and they could load him aboard as cargo. (He’d wake up ornery, but in the right place.) Anyway, of course there’d be a firefight, and someone would shout to him: ‘B A! I’m out of ammo! Gimme clips!’ and zonk, out he’d go right in the middle of the fighting.

Here we are, bullets whizzing around us. We’re in a tight spot. But the Conservative government is in a state of post-hypnotic suggestion. If the words ‘more net migration’ or ‘EU-wide migration deal’ are said out loud, there’s a danger that they’ll pass clean out. So they are going through quite the contortions to avoid using forms of words that even hint at such a thing. I pity the fool.