Diplomacy has never been a particular talent of mine, and there’s no need to deploy it on this occasion.

Scott Morrison has just chalked up a howler, his worst week in the prime ministership, in part because of circumstances visited upon him – like Pauline Hanson doing the government like a dinner in the Senate on the union bill, denying Morrison his Great Victory of the week – and in part because of his own misjudgments.

The signature prime ministerial swagger turned to petulance on Thursday as various pressures bore down.

Morrison was grumpy on Thursday that Labor just kept asking questions about Angus Taylor (imagine, an opposition, asking questions, when there’s an ongoing police investigation); grumpy Labor hadn’t complained in the chamber when he first telegraphed his intention to speak to the New South Wales police; grumpy, inferentially, that they hadn’t stopped him from being a doofus.

Well the prime minister was a doofus, all on his own.

PM's phone call to police chief an inappropriate attempt to use position, former top judge says Read more

Let’s whip through the doofus roll call of the week. Morrison could have insisted Taylor step aside for the duration of the police investigation, in the process blunting the rolling interrogation of the parliamentary week. Instead he elected to keep the minister in his position, in full public view, paralysed by a police investigation, because Labor couldn’t be given a scalp.

Then Morrison called the NSW police commissioner, by his own account, to find out whether or not there was a police investigation into Taylor, perhaps momentarily forgetting he had at his disposal a whole private office staffed with competent people and a whole department of professionals who could have made that inquiry in an entirely appropriate way on his behalf.

We have washed up in the post-truth era, an untethered hell of our own making, a hall of mirrors

This overreach was the wrong thing to do on a number of levels, some of which I’ve already ventilated, but perhaps the worst of the misjudgment is the shadow it casts across the entire process.

Just think about it.

In the event the NSW police come back next week, or whenever, and report that Taylor and his office have no case to answer, there will be an ongoing public debate about whether or not this has been a proper and thorough investigation, or whether it has been tainted by politics.

This debate will happen in large part because Morrison rushed to the phone, rather than just taking a quiet minute to think whether the government needed a prime minister or a saviour right at that moment.

Now perhaps the prime minister doesn’t care about the inconvenience of his actions having consequences, because on current form this will be everybody else’s fault. Labor’s mostly. Probably Guardian Australia, too, for … how did he put it on Thursday? Pulling Anthony Albanese’s chain.

Guardian Australia (@GuardianAus) “We know who’s pulling his chain”: Scott Morrison says Anthony Albanese only became concerned about his phone call to the NSW police commissioner regarding an investigation into Angus Taylor after “he read it in the Guardian”. Follow live: https://t.co/qpDHygX3q2 #auspol #qt pic.twitter.com/wvpENhQog9

Angus Taylor should stand aside as minister because it’s the right thing to do | Katharine Murphy Read more

Dear, dear. Boo hoo. I mean, seriously? You’d say grow up and stop sulking – because being in power in 2019 is hard as hell, and the price of entry to government is being accountable for your actions – but what would be the point of the counsel, well intentioned as it is, when Scott knows best, about everything?

The other more than mildly disturbing element of the week was Morrison’s preparedness to be sloppy and unrepentant about being sloppy in full public view, from the call to the police commissioner, to misleading the chamber on four separate occasions over the past couple of days – really quite brazen behaviour I haven’t seen in Canberra before.

We have washed up in the post-truth era, an untethered hell of our own making, a hall of mirrors. Emboldened by opportunity, a number of politicians around the world are seeking to govern in a consequence-free universe, not seeking to trouble the discourse with facts or stabilising conventions.

The mark of the post-truth politician is the preparedness to pit themselves against their own institutions, to trash the lot in an effort to fly free, saying all the things, feeling all the feels.

Until this week, I’ve felt that comparisons between Morrison and Donald Trump have been way overblown. Now, I’m not so sure.