Step back from the chaotic nightmare engulfing the Labour party and two points are strikingly clear: Jeremy Corbyn needs a new parliamentary party; and the parliamentary party needs a new leader. A third point arises from the previous two. The current impasse between the leader and his MPs cannot last until 2020, still the most probable year an election will be called. Yet after the leadership contest Labour MPs will probably have Corbyn as their leader and, if he wins, Corbyn will definitely have the same parliamentary party.

Leadership contests are always symptoms of a much deeper crisis in a party. The Conservatives had lots of silly contests from 1997 until 2005 as they agonised over who they were and what they were for. Now Labour stages its second in a year between a candidate who has been an MP since 1983 with no experience of politics at the top until he became leader, and a figure who few have heard of and who cannot be fully formed as a national figure with such limited experience.

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The authoritative poise of Theresa May at prime minister’s questions is the consequence of her being home secretary for six years and in opposition when the Conservatives were having their existential crisis – one that is by no means resolved. In politics, experience is not a desirable extra but an essential qualification at the top.

How has Labour got itself into this position, a leadership contest a year after the last one in which the existing leader is the favourite to win again? There are answers relating to the party’s past that could span a thousand columns. In a radio series on the high political drama of Corbyn’s first year as leader I have interviewed most of the pivotal figures on both sides. The final episode next week shows there was little co-ordination between the parliamentary rebels as they contemplated a coup.

The senior Labour MP, Margaret Hodge, sought a vote of no confidence in Corbyn after the referendum. The shadow cabinet did not know of her plans. Separately Hilary Benn had spoken to shadow cabinet colleagues about how they might remove Corbyn but did not know that his tentative moves would be front page news in that weekend’s Observer. When they were revealed Corbyn sacked him. Later several shadow cabinet members resigned.

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, tried to persuade Corbyn to stand down by proposing “Corbynism without Corbyn”. This move was doomed to fail. Imagine Corbyn telling his supporters. “It’s all OK. I’m stepping down but Corbynism will flourish.” Corbyn has a naive streak but he is not that gullible.

The scenario is as improbable as Corbyn’s supporters deciding they will vote for Owen Smith because Smith has said he would make their hero the party president, a post that does not exist. Smith needs to find smarter ways of wooing this electorate than a Monty Python-type proposition that Corbyn rightly dismissed with humour.

The Labour rebels plotted separately and without a big candidate to take on Corbyn. In doing so they have inevitably become part of the current problem. They are in the painfully contorted position of being both passionately sincere and disingenuous in pointing out that the Corbyn leadership “isn’t working”. For sure they mean it, but one of the many reasons it is not working is that they constantly attack him.

Labour MPs point to their party’s dire poll rating as proof that Corbyn must go. But it is a minor miracle that Labour’s poll rating is not even lower, given the number of MPs who have been arguing in public that their leader is useless.

These public declarations of dissent partly explain the apparently deranged behaviour of Corbyn’s office, contemplating contacting an MP’s parents to put pressure on him, dropping a planned campaign on rail fares to conduct a reshuffle, appointing and sacking an MP recovering from cancer. The people in Corbyn’s office behave like paranoid neurotics partly because they have lots to be paranoid about. After decades as a backbench rebel Corbyn cannot and does not know about the arts of leadership, including how to manage a team. But part of the explanation for his behaviour is a justifiable fear that the team is out to get him.

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Are both sides ready for more of this? Apparently they are. Of course it is possible that the contender, Smith, is the victor. But even if that were the outcome, impossible burdens would be placed on a new leader with little exposure to the titanic demands of modern politics at the highest level.

If Corbyn wins again he will not resign and why should he? He would have won two contests on leadership rules devised and hailed by others. Parties behave oddly when they are suffering from a deeper crisis but it would be bizarre for a leader to declare that he had won twice and would therefore resign.

Meanwhile Labour MPs indicate they are prepared for a longer war of attrition. They insist sincerely that it is their party as much as anyone else’s and are not going to split. This insistence might change in the cold light of an autumnal day, but given the fragmented attempt at a coup in the past few weeks it seems unlikely that dissenters will get their act together to leave in one leap to form a new and substantial parliamentary opposition party. Instead they are preparing for what one describes as sullen acceptance.

And yet another year of the impasse will wreck their party and make their political lives even more hellish. If they do not split there is only one other option. Instead of a deadly war of attrition that would probably lead to Corbyn winning a third leadership contest, with an office justifiably displaying extreme paranoia, the rebels could do the opposite.

Every single Labour heavyweight could offer to serve on the front bench, perform well in parliament – the arena where they are strong, and become assertive in the shadow cabinet by sheer force of experience and political talent. These are figures shaped by ministerial experience, the highs of victory, the trauma of defeat.

Such a front bench under a leader obliged to compromise and perhaps willing to go of his own volition later in the parliament could not be worse for anyone all than the current nightmare, in which all are trapped and with virtually no room to navigate. It might even be a little better. Call it a Third Way.