“The United Kingdom will leave the European Union on 29 March 2019” joins “Strong and stable”, “Coalition of chaos”, “Magic money tree”, “Brexit means Brexit”, “Nothing has changed”, “No deal is better than a bad deal” and “There is not going to be a general election” in the graveyard of Theresa May’s doomed rhetoric. Her benighted ministry, a protracted wrestle with David Cameron for the title of “worst prime minister on their own terms since Lord North lost the American colonies”, stutters on thanks to Tory paralysis and cowardice. When did British politics become a plotline that would have been rejected by the creators of The Thick of It on the grounds that satire has to be believable to be funny? Sadly, long before May’s Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay took to the dispatch box to plead with MPs to vote to extend article 50, then marched off to the division lobbies to vote against it.

Our house is on fire – the Tories are the arsonists, manically splashing more petrol on the flames lapping at their own feet – and it is natural to want to locate an exit. Bad news: this isn’t The Thick of It, it’s a hammy disaster film, and every escape you run to is blocked with rubble. To date, parliament has rejected Theresa May’s botched deal, Labour’s alternative proposals, no deal and a second referendum. So what now?

The cause of a second referendum is a noble one. There are those of us who fear it would escalate an already gruesome culture war and deliver the same result, but a desire to press a “please just make this all go away” button is more than understandable. It is a cause ill-served, then, by charlatans for whom a “people’s vote” is primarily a means to beat Labour, not an end in itself. Chuka Umunna, the de facto leader of the Independent Group, had declared that he had “no time for calls for a second referendum because I think it comes across as disrespectful to those who voted to leave”.

Yesterday, the Independent Group (TIG), of which he is a member, tabled an amendment opposed by the official People’s Vote campaign on the basis that, as things stand, it would be defeated and therefore undermine their cause. But TIG couldn’t allow a minor distraction such as the future of the country to get in the way of a pre-written press release slamming Labour for treachery. Labour ordered its troops to abstain on this futile amendment, and yet still a majority of parliament voted against. A pernicious myth, peddled by disparate political factions for self-serving purposes, that Jeremy Corbyn is simultaneously weak and impotent, and in possession of a shiny “stop Brexit” red button, died yesterday. If Labour’s leadership backed a new referendum – a prospect most Britons currently oppose – as things stand, parliament would decisively reject it.

It is easy to feel resigned to the idea there is no exit from this burning house. It is, however, untrue. Most MPs would back a compromise: a customs union and close alignment with the single market. The extension of article 50 now endorsed by parliament must surely now provide the time and space to settle on this accommodation. It will cause dissatisfaction amongst both remainers and leavers, but, to be blunt, it is a bit late for that. There is one primary obstacle: a flailing prime minister terrified of the history books, which will remember her solely for unnecessarily evaporating her parliamentary majority, and then splitting the Tories. May’s desperation to preserve her own party, at any cost, is the main peril now facing our crisis-ridden nation. In the meantime, drunk on adrenaline and ideology, her Brexiteers wait for the whole house to burn.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist