The Tory leadership circus rolls on. This time for a hustings arranged for lobby journalists in Westminster, where the format was more individual than group therapy, with each candidate free to explain – without interruption from the others – how their relationship with reality had irretrievably broken down.

Though still without Boris Johnson, the Conservative party’s very own priapic Mr Blobby, who is acting as if he is on the run from the Child Support Agency. The country has seen more of Julian Assange in the last six months than it has of Johnson. Something for which normally we’d be all very grateful, only Boris is the clear frontrunner to become next prime minister. It says something for Johnson’s innate self-destruction that his minders believe their man says it best when he says nothing at all. Doesn’t bode well for him reopening the Brexit negotiations with the EU.

Rory Stewart was first in the room and quickly settled in to the Chatty Rory shtick that has been the hallmark of his campaign. Nah, he wasn’t going to make a big pitch. Everyone in the room had heard it all before, so why didn’t they just get on and ask him whatever they wanted?

Here the plain talking rather hit the buffers. Stewart can take apart all his rivals’ Brexit plans with ease – who can’t? – but struggles to explain his own. Other than he wants to have another go at getting Theresa May’s Brexit deal through parliament and, failing that, he would set up a three-week citizens’ assembly. And if that still didn’t produce any answers that could get through parliament, the whole country would have to be given ECT. If that didn’t work, it was collective euthanasia as a last resort. Stewart’s plan B is urgently in need of a plan C.

During the TV debate the night before, Sajid Javid had cut a slightly subdued figure, as if overawed by the occasion and the verbal dexterity of the other candidates. Here he was rather more relaxed as he settled into the comfort zone of his backstory. He was the change candidate from the backstreets of Bristol who hadn’t been to Oxford and would stand up for minorities.

This worked well until he tried to talk away how he had taken advantage of the deregulation of the financial markets to make £3m a year selling credit default swaps for Deutsche Bank prior to the crash, had rushed to Dover to sink the boats of incoming refugees, and had disowned Shamima Begum. These things are relative, I suppose. Right now, Javid’s strongest selling point is his dog.

Which is more than Jeremy Hunt has going for him. There’s even less to the foreign secretary than meets the eye. Now he was little more than Barbie’s friend Ken, still dressed in the BA airline cabin steward uniform with optional union jack lapel badge, whose idea of talking tough is telling someone there are no more chicken meals left and that she will have to make do with the fish.

Yes, he was totally 150% cool with President Trump retweeting racist remarks about Sadiq Khan, because a little bit of racism was just joshing. And no, he wasn’t going to criticise Johnson for getting Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe banged up for longer, because anyone could make a mistake. And besides, he’d quite like a job in Boris’s cabinet. Because he couldn’t even guarantee himself one in his own. As for Brexit, he wasn’t keen on no deal, but would take the hit if it was a choice between destroying the country or destroying the Tory party. Thanks, Ken.

During the night, medics must have been mainlining Dominic Raab with valium to try to control his anger. It didn’t wholly work, as his neck bulged out of his shirt and the anger vein in his forehead still pulsed, but for once he didn’t actively look like someone who was about to commit GBH. Instead, the air of menace was more latent. The reason he was going to be able to force the EU to renegotiate the withdrawal deal was because they were terrified of him. He could out-psycho anyone. He knew where the bodies were buried. Mainly because he had put them there.

Michael Gove was edgy. The campaign has exposed a brittle side and his attempts at talking tough have rung hollow. The more he talks of having fire in his belly and being a warrior for the dispossessed, the less he is believed. And you can sense that in his heart he knows the game is up. His eyes are scarred with the terror of defeat and he drums his fingers constantly. He is unable to reconcile himself to the injustice of being the man who helped win the referendum and no longer being trusted by Brexiters as a true believer. Brexit has broken him as it has broken all the others. And will, in time, break Boris.

The hustings ended with a 20-minute silence from Johnson. And for the country. None of the those fighting for second place on the ballot had really screwed up. By and large, they had tried to give straight answers. But in so doing they had merely exposed just how fucked we are.