We should never have doubted her. Even after her government had suffered the most humiliating defeat on record, there was only the slightest chink in the prime minister’s denial. After seizing the initiative by volunteering to accept a motion of no confidence the next day and insisting she would listen to parliament and reach out to other parties, Theresa May retreated into her shell. Something would happen sooner or later but she had no idea what. All along, the plan B had been to have no plan B and try to muddle along with plan A. Give May enough time and a version of plan A could even be back on the table.

Jeremy Corbyn duly tabled his vote of no confidence and the SNP’s Ian Blackford and Labour’s Yvette Cooper implored the prime minister to extend article 50. May remained impassive, giving nothing away. Almost zen-like. The most painful bit had been the waiting to lose the vote. Sitting and wondering if it would be as bad as she feared. In hindsight, she now regretted delaying the vote as it had rather ruined her Christmas. Now it was over she felt an unexpected serenity. She was still alive. She was still breathing. The country might be in chaos but she felt weirdly OK.

Making her closing statement, May had been consumed by fear. She knew she was supposed to be making a rousing last-ditch appeal to parliament, but she’d never been able to lift herself above autopilot. Her delivery was flat and disengaged as she ran through the reasons why parliament should accept her deal for the umpteenth time. It offered certainty. The certainty of defeat. It was the most important vote in MPs’ lives. Until tomorrow’s. Or the day after. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. At times like this, she wondered why she bothered.

Then May had known there was to be no salvation from the moment the Speaker had chosen not to allow a vote on the Andrew Murrison amendment that could have minimised the scale of her defeat. As John Bercow made his ruling, the prime minister’s head slumped. There was to be no momentary relief from abject misery. She was stuck in her very public hell.

Geoffrey Cox had tried to cheer her up in his opening speech. The attorney general’s last pantomime outing at the dispatch box had attracted mixed reviews and he had received extensive coaching in the interim from the Brian Blessed School of Overacting. But though his technique had improved a little – the voice had a more velvety fruitiness and his arm gestures were more expansive – his material was still desperately thin.

We were where we were. Everything that had taken place since 23 June 2016 had been an ineluctable step towards this vote. The backstop was just an airlock: a holding position between two different barometric states. A nano-second’s pause before entering an Albion of hope and dreams. Moreover, expectations of the withdrawal agreement had become wildly inflated. Now was the time for stoical pragmatism. A bad deal was better than a no deal.

None of this was really true and Cox knew it. As did MPs from both sides of the house who picked him off at will. We were where we were as a result of the prime minister’s arbitrary red lines and decision to hold an unnecessary election. On the other side of the airlock was a total vacuum. That expectations had been so high was all of the government’s own making. One self-inflicted wound after another.

The more Cox’s arguments were dismantled, the more bloated his oratory became. Unable to read his audience, he rattled on for almost exactly an hour allowing himself 10 encores (none of which had been requested). Back at his Devon home, Cox’s dog, Lily, put her paws over her eyes. She had warned him there was a huge gap between am-dram and the professional stage but he hadn’t listened. He had imagined he was giving his finest Henry V and ended up a cross-gartered Malvolio. Still, she had always preferred comedies.

With Cox having grabbed so much of the limelight, backbench speeches were soon restricted to five minutes. Bad news for Dominic Raab, who had planned on using his as a leadership bid. No one believes in Dom quite as much as Dom does. Or at all. He has a campaign team of one. Dom has even managed to forget he was Brexit secretary when the withdrawal agreement was being negotiated. From here to obscurity.

Thereafter MPs rehashed familiar lines both for and against – mostly against – the withdrawal agreement, while sobbing with tortured self-pity. But no one was listening. They were just waiting to find out what happened next. Come the vote, they were still none the wiser. Except for one thing. Despite a catastrophic defeat, May would survive the no confidence vote. She would remain prime minister. Albeit a prime minister without a clue. A surreal end to a surreal day.