Yesterday was a very good day to bury a bad conference. Three weeks ago, rapidly oxidising political genius Dominic Cummings briefed that the Tories were going to “wreck” the Labour party’s annual gathering. After three days in Brighton, it was hard to see how even Downing Street’s Eric Cartman could have done a better job of it than the party themselves. Maybe he could have made Labour go on for an extra day? Or had a few more Dadaist votes on their Brexit position? In the end, Cummings master-strategised himself on to the wrong end of a monster constitutional VAR decision, taking one of his “alternative branches of history” right up the jacksy, and delivering Labour the considerable benefit of averting people’s eyes from their unforced errors here.

Sixteen hours earlier, Len McCluskey – who bestrides conference’s jugular like a colossus – had been telling the TV cameras the party’s shambolic show-of-hands vote on a Brexit position was a democratic triumph. “Everybody’s a winner here today,” the Unite boss beamed. “Everybody.” Oh Len. You should definitely tell that to the people I can still hear screaming “CARD VOTE?!?!?!” – in vain – in the hall behind you, having been denied the opportunity to #usepens. At a fringe event later that evening, it was mentioned that Jeremy Corbyn’s approval rating is minus 60, the worst for an opposition leader since comparable polling records began. “So what?” called someone in the audience. Madam, I am sure it is a sublime irrelevance.

As usual, this conference featured a number of Labour figures and outriders dismissing the implications of the fact their guy is trailing to a man they consistently recognise as Britain’s leading useless shit. The general line is: “I’d expect Jeremy to put on X number of points in a campaign situation.” Good for you. I’d expect him to already be miles ahead of Boris Johnson, who, in the past three weeks alone, has lost control of Parliament; emitted a primal grunt as one of his MPs defected while he was conducting prime minister’s questions; failed to stop the Commons passing a Brexit extension law; expelled 21 of his own MPs, including two former chancellors and his hero Winston Churchill’s grandson; driven his own brother from the cabinet and politics; whiteyed a policewoman during a speech in which he appeared to have stirred a teaspoon of ketamine into his tea before going on …

I’m sorry, I’m going to have to crack open a new paragraph because that one got too long. Continuing with Boris Johnson’s September, then: the prime minister lost another cabinet minister, Amber Rudd, who in effect accused him of lying to the public; continued to be heckled by multiple members of said public every time he went out, including a new father who lambasted him for the state of the NHS outside a neonatal ward; declared himself the Incredible Hulk, only to be humiliated by the prime minister of Luxembourg after refusing to do a joint press conference because some people were shouting at him; it was revealed that a model-entrepreneur-whatever, whose flat he reportedly used to visit between mayoring stints, received £126,000 of public money; refused to answer questions about any of that; and has now suffered the Supreme Court/jacksy interface. There’s more – so much more – but simply not the space.

So yes: on Tuesday, Jeremy Corbyn was able to take to the conference stage to call for the resignation of the above guy. How is that for being born under a lucky sign? At that moment, and really quite by accident, he ended up looking better than Boris Johnson, even though he still delivers speeches with the same mesmeric vim your optician wonders: “And is it clearer with this lens … or without? With …. or without?” Corbyn somehow seems to get worse at it the more of them he does. A bit like Emma Watson in the Harry Potter movies.

Democratically elected … Tom Watson outside the conference. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA

As you do when you have a radical and often interesting policy agenda, conference began with eye-catching, headline-frotting attempts to abolish deputy leader Tom Watson, a man democratically elected by Labour members. Even as the Supreme Court was handing down its judgment on Boris Johnson’s unlawful suspension of Parliament, conference delegates were still being handed leaflets bearing the headline: “SHUN TOM WATSON!” (If you’re not familiar with the joy of sects, a Labour shunning is much like an Amish shunning, except you don’t have to raise a barn afterwards.)

Having failed to see Watson off, the Supreme Court news enabled Labour to bump his speech to the Wednesday morning so that Corbyn could speak on the Tuesday instead. Watson promptly tweeted that he would not be speaking at all. So we’ll never know whether Labour’s deputy leader would have been formally shunned. As he put it: “I’ll save the speech I was going to make to conference until next year.” And you can set your watch by that. As long as it’s one of those edible sweet-bracelet watches with a big fizzy face.

Day two of conference dawned to news of the pending departure of Andrew Fisher, one of Corbyn’s very closest aides. Fisher’s was a mild sort of resignation, accusing the most senior figures in the party ranks of “class war”, “a blizzard of lies and excuses”, “a lack of professionalism, competence and human decency”, and concluding: “I no longer have faith we can succeed.” Only in Labour – and this genuinely happened – could Fisher then have had Sunday breakfast with Corbyn and his team in the full view of the conference hotel dining room. I do hope the waiter made the most of it. “Would you like a newspaper with your breakfast, Mr Fisher? I’m assuming you’ve read the Sunday Times. Ooh, what am I like – you’ve written half of it. Still, nothing some beans on toast can’t smooth over.”

Light moments were in short supply. That said, Emily Thornberry opened her speech with some anecdote about falling off her bike and her life flashing before her eyes, and tapping her nose suggestively about some of the naughty fun she remembered having. Owing to the gesture being misunderstood, Thornberry was forced to clarify her position shortly after her speech, tweeting: “Just for the removal of doubt, I was channelling Kenneth Williams in the Carry On films when I tapped my nose, not Pablo Bloody Escobar!!!” Lol don’t worry, conference – the shadow foreign secretary isn’t doing her cocaine material, just the sexytime stuff. Hey – it’s what the Palestinians would have wanted.

Nudge, nudge … Emily Thornberry confuses her audience. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Like Keir Starmer – whose expression during Corbyn’s speech might have been that of a man realising he isn’t going to get all of the Infinity Stones in time – Thornberry was primarily preoccupied with getting conference to adopt a position in which the party would campaign for remain at the next election. The good news is we’ve found the only thing worse than the modern pox of “gender reveal parties” for couples expecting a baby. The bad news is that it’s Labour’s Brexit position reveal party, an event that now seems to have been happening for actual years. We will now have to wait until special one-day conference after the election to find out whether it’s a girl Brexit position or a boy one.

Before the big vote, Thornberry likened this moment to the one in Star Wars where the rebels are trapped in the garbage crusher. “You get the hero standing in the middle,” she explained at one fringe event, “and the walls are coming in.” Please don’t tell me that Jeremy Corbyn is Han Solo in this – but go on. “The answer is not to just stand there and go: ‘Oh well, I’m right,’” explained Thornberry. “The answer is to get out of there.” Well, actually … technically, the answer is to get R2-D2 to disable all the trash compactors on the detention level of the Death Star. Or, I guess, get another R2 unit to disable the Labour powerbrokers who reckon it is better to achieve a show of loyalty to Corbyn than a Brexit position that doesn’t fill with dread the person who has to ring a civilian doorbell and explain it.

I’m afraid no such R2 unit emerged. And for all the fire cover afforded by the Worst Government In History™, what happened here in Brighton still happened. Whenever the next election comes – possibly in about 15 minutes – Labour will go into it with a Brexit policy that we already know makes every shadow minister who says it on TV sound like a stone-cold dick. And which goes viral – in an avian flu sort of way – every time one of them attempts it. We will come to the farcical voting scenes via which it was arrived at shortly. In the meantime, it is to be hoped that Labour will soon vote, ideally via a show of hands, to convene a special conference to decide how badly they messed this one up.

Do people notice? There is a classic Victoria Wood mockumentary on the making of Acorn Antiques, her brilliant parodic soap opera set in an antique shop. A series of entirely self-induced setbacks mean cast and crew have run out of time, and have to shoot an episode that will go out live. Backstage at one point during the broadcast, tea lady Mrs Overall is so taken up with a humblebrag anecdote that she misses her cue, and enters the scene without her crucial tea tray. Given most of the lines relate to the contents of that tray, she and the other characters are forced to mime holding one in the ensuing discussion about the various items on it. Clearly, it’s a disastrous and avoidable shambles, and there’s panic in the director’s gallery. “Shall we cut? Go back?” “No,” drawls the monstrous show producer with a smile. “We professionals notice. Joe Public never clocks a damn thing.”

This high-handed insouciance is the preferred get-out at Labour conference, where needless rows and unprofessionalism are blithely assumed not to cut through. I spoke to figures from the top of the party downward telling me – and perhaps themselves – that the public doesn’t pay attention to the plotting and walkouts and so on. But guys … that still doesn’t mean you should do it?

Joe Public does occasionally clock things that appear on the main news bulletins, however, and the decision to screen clips of Labour’s handling of the back-remain-now motion means it might dimly have penetrated the consciousness of those dim remainers. It really was some special telly.

By way of a curtain-raiser, John McDonnell had conceded: “There will be a bit of banter.” In the event, there was bantergeddon (superseded 16 hours later by the Supreme Court banterpocalypse). After a closely run show of hands, this was the precise dialogue from the platform featuring the chair, Wendy Nichols, and Labour’s general secretary Jennie Formby:

A show of hands … Labour remain campaigners. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Nichols: “Sorry, I thought it was one way, and Jennie said something else, so …” [clamour from the floor]

Formby: “It is lost.”

Nichols: Yeah … that was lost.” [cheers/uproar]

Nichols: [to Formby] They’re calling for a card vote. It’s obviously a card vote. There’s enough of them on their feet.” [clamour/uproar, the “Oh Jeremy Corbyn chant”]

Nichols: “In my view it was carried.”

Formby: “It was lost. It was lost.”

Formby: [inaudible]

Nichols: “Sorry. Sorry. I’m getting advice. It was lost.”

So there you go. I’m not sure of the wisdom of bringing this democracy masterclass to a wider TV audience. At the best of times the rules and processes of Labour conference appear entirely impenetrable to outsiders. Composites, cancelled NEC meetings, late-night stitch-ups … What happens in the hall and beyond is partly The Glass Bead Game, the elaborate and rarefied pastime in Herman Hesse’s novel, whose intricacies and opacities take a lifetime to master. But it is also partly Boar on the Floor, a bonding parlour game featured in a recent Succession episode about a corporate hunting trip, which sees participants forced to crawl around the floor of a Hungarian lodge and fight for sausages, willingly or otherwise, in a game that had zero rules beyond the bullying whim of the terrifying paterfamilias. Sorry, I know we’ve already mentioned everyone’s favourite self-appointed Boar Master, Len McCluskey.

The upshot of Brighton is that Labour have once again done well out of events beyond their control. Events within their control, not so much. Just as Jose Mourinho’s footballing philosophy in effect regards even having the ball as a needless risk, so Labour seem to think that being gifted historic constitutional drama and cock-up by the other side counts as having played well. It doesn’t. Interesting and appealing policy announcements were allowed to be overshadowed by plotting, division and endless, needless machinations. That said, Mourinho once progressed to a Champions’ League final after a game in which his side had 19% possession – and our politics is more volatile than ever. So don’t rule anything out for Labour, from actually managing to beat Conservative party history’s worst lying satyriasis-afflicted Queen-insulting unlawful humanoid, to losing to him, to drawing and having to form a coalition government with Bayern Munich.