On Tuesday, Brexit party MEPs decided to take a stand against the undemocratic EU they’d been elected to democratically. Rather than do something frivolous such as returning their wages, they decided to turn their backs at the playing of the European anthem during the parliament’s opening ceremony, a move only slightly classier than mooning.

When the 29 Brexiteers were elected to the European parliament, many were concerned that they wouldn’t represent the UK properly. And yet here they were on day one already crapping themselves for attention – and as such were representing the UK better than we possibly could have imagined. Shortly afterwards, Nigel Farage tweeted proudly “The Brexit party has already made its presence felt”, and he’s right, in the same way that a toddler smearing spaghetti on the walls of a fancy restaurant while repeating every swearword they know will grab the attention of their parents. Who knows what the party has in store next, but we should probably set our faces to apologetic cringe mode just in case.

From the get-go the new MEPs have been looking for aspects of the EU “gravy train” to get outraged by while chugging down the gravy. Annunziata Rees-Mogg got the ball rolling a few weeks ago by tweeting disbelief that she had been given an iPad to do work on. A real “woman gets given work device to work on by work” shocker.

Yesterday, former Loaded editor Martin Daubney also had a crack at it, tweeting of the fairly lacklustre opening of the EU parliament, “You can not grasp the sheer excess of this until you sit here”, forgetting that the state opening of the UK parliament begins with a horse-drawn coach delivering a huge jewelled crown to sit on top of an actual queen. But I guess the Great Sword of State and several massive golden maces don’t quite match the sheer excess of [squints at EU parliament opening ceremony] some kind of annual meeting of accountants in conference room B of a former polytechnic in Kent.

What must the EU think of us at this point, based on the crop of clueless idiots we’ve sent to represent us? A woman so posh the first of her three names is Annunziata accepting paycheques but getting all hoity-toity whenever she is offered a pen, and a former lads’ mag supremo thinking the height of extravagance is having a parliament building at all, ganging up with 27 other absolute Widdecombes to remind everyone of Nazis in the Reichstag.

Even the Lib Dems – who were meant to be our grownups – decided to arrive wearing “Bollocks to Brexit” tops, which, even if you agree with the sentiment, isn’t an obvious choice of clothing for your first day on a job. Maybe next time, instead of a profanity T-shirt, try wearing a nicely ironed tie?

The shenanigans at the European parliament might not be the worst of it. When EU leaders look at the UK – a nation they told not to waste the extra time it has been given to sort this mess out – they see a leadership contest unfolding between one terrible foreign secretary who compared the EU to a Soviet prison and a slightly worse foreign secretary who compared the EU to Hitler. Both of whom are insisting that they’re so good at diplomacy that a new deal with the EU is all but guaranteed. From the inside, the contest feels a bit like watching drugged-up, half-crazed monkeys fighting for control of a clown car you’re in the back of. It must be even weirder watching that clown car from the outside as it heads right at you at full speed, its drivers screaming (in monkey) “LET’S GIVE TALKS ANOTHER TRY”.

With not much time left to escape no deal (again, again) we’re relying on the EU not being sick enough of us by 31 October to grant us another extension when we inevitably beg for one. Based on the candidates for prime minister at home and our MEPs in Strasbourg cooking up new ways to be self-shaming jerks (all at the expense of the European taxpayers), you might want to start stockpiling Halloween-themed tinned goods before the mid-October rush.

• James Felton is a TV and radio comedy writer