First history, then the hangover: MPs traipse back to the farce

The Ship of Fools drifts on, its captain and crew seemingly indifferent to the rocks ahead. There was a time when Westminster was just your average shitshow, but that shark has long since been jumped. A shitshow at least has a certain entertainment value; now there’s more fun to be had from having a panic attack. Which is what the rest of the country has moved on to. That and foraging in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recycling for food to stockpile.

And there is nothing average about this parliament. If only. That’s a level of elite performance which most MPs can only dream about. It’s taken years of training for this bunch just to learn how to get dressed in the morning. Or undressed in Boris Johnson’s case. You’d get more sense out of someone who’d overdosed on barbiturates.

Alice hasn’t just disappeared through the looking glass. She’s kicked in the whole mirror. On the morning after the night before, it was almost as if no one was fully aware of the significance of the government having suffered the most crushing defeat on record.

Rather than a sense of history in the making, there was more a vague sense of embarrassment. As if everyone had blacked out after getting completely trashed and had come round unable to remember precisely what they had said or done. All they had was a lingering sense of having behaved badly. A communal dance of shame in which no one quite dared to look anyone else in the eye.

As ever it was Theresa May who set the tone. At prime minister’s questions nothing had changed. The reason her deal had been rejected was because parliament had failed to understand it properly. So as a special treat, she was prepared to sit down with those MPs who agreed with her and explain to them why she was right. And when she had done that she would bring the deal back to the Commons to let them have another go at voting it down.

This wasn’t just delusional. It was disturbingly pathological. Jeremy Corbyn tried to introduce a note of reality, but May wasn’t having it. At times of crisis her sense of denial inevitably prevails. Those who had spent the morning working on decommissioning her memory had done a decent job. She had already blanked out just how crap she was. She was proud to be the woman without qualities.

Things didn’t much improve when the Labour leader opened the no-confidence vote. You’d have imagined that Corbyn would have made a bit of an effort with this speech. After all, it was notionally the moment he had aspired to for the past 35 years. He spoke well enough about why May had failed on Brexit, but then even a Question Time audience can manage that these days. He was less than convincing on why he should replace her. Maybe he was just distracted by the knowledge he was certain to lose and would then be nudged closer to a second referendum he didn’t want. Or perhaps he was more in touch with the country than he sometimes appears. Most opinion polls have “don’t know” as the runaway favourite to be next prime minister. After the Four Pot Plants.

May defended her record, slowly and robotically. She was a legend: she’d been held in contempt of parliament; she’d lost a budget vote; and now her Brexit deal had suffered a record parliamentary defeat. That was a stunning hat-trick of own goals. And she hadn’t even done the decent thing and resigned! Beat that! She was already a YouTube classic. Give her a few more weeks and she’d overtake David Cameron as the country’s worst-ever prime minister.

The next few hours were best forgotten as Tories, many of whom had gone out of their way to make plain their lack of confidence in May, went on to say why she had their full confidence and should remain prime minister. Some even wondered out loud why the public had such a low opinion of politicians. They should try listening to themselves some time. Rebecca Pow sobbed that the Commons should have been talking about Conservative achievements. Not that she could think of many.

Wes Streeting, Stella Creasy and Tom Watson livened things up a bit, but there was no disguising that history was proving to be an anti-climax as no one seriously believed the confidence vote had a prayer. Michael Gove was so sure of victory that, in between rubbishing the idea of Corbyn as a possible prime minister, he took the piss out of May by describing her as “inspirational” in his closing speech.

Sure enough, the prime minister crept over the line by 52% to 48%; history repeating itself first as tragedy, then as farce. Not that she cared. She had won a vote for the first time in weeks. She was a winner after all.

May made a brief statement finally inviting other party leaders to hear why her red lines still stood. Corbyn and the Scottish National party’s Ian Blackford demanded that a no deal should be taken off the table: the DUP’s Nigel Dodds reminded her she had only survived because of his party’s votes and that the price of his continued support was a hard Brexit. And more cash.

The chancellor immediately got out his credit card but May remained impassive. Her face frozen. The Brexit circle could still not be squared and the shutters had gone down again. She wasn’t listening. She was barely there. Even in victory, she was a darkness visible.