Think of Westminster as a replicant variant of The Truman Show. A reality show in which the entire cast of grotesques and inadequates believe they are genuinely in power, while the audience of millions enjoys the comedy, the self-inflicted crises and the series-ending cliffhangers. In schools and universities around the world, the programme is hailed as an object lesson in how not to run a country.

It’s just about the only explanation that now makes sense. What’s more, it’s one that saves a lot of heartache and existential despair. Consider the evidence. How else could you end up with two party leaders less suited to office, if not for the fact they had been deliberately chosen for their entertainment value? After all, competence makes for spectacularly dull TV.

There was a time a few years ago when prime minister’s questions were almost a box-office draw. Hard to believe, but David Cameron and Ed Miliband were a lukewarm ticket. That good. Now, with Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn as the main attractions, it has become everybody’s short straw.

Ministers and shadow ministers know they are likely to appear in every camera angle. So they shoot up amphetamines behind the Speaker’s chair before taking their seats. Eyes bulge in blank stares, beads of sweat appear and teeth grind as they fight to stay awake throughout the 45-minute session. Backbench MPs have an easier time of it. Barbiturates are openly tossed around like Smarties as everyone seeks their own private oblivion.

Then the lack of fun began. Corbyn opened promisingly enough with an attack on May for screwing up the country with a double whammy of austerity and her handling of Brexit. The prime minister mumbled something almost unintelligible – English is her second language, bollocks being her first – at being proud of the expansion in the use of food banks. And that was pretty much that. Five more times the leader of the opposition asked an almost identical question and five times he got the same non-answer.

Weirdly, both leaders appeared quite satisfied with their efforts. But there again, a no-score draw probably suited both. Corbyn wasn’t called upon to explain why he considered Chris Williamson’s unapologetic stance on the party’s antisemitism to be so serious that it could only be dealt with by the most extreme punishment of a rap over the knuckles. Though later in the day, the Labour leader would come to realise that the charges weren’t as grave as first thought, and consequently reduced the punishment to a suspension. Only Labour can turn a major embarrassment into a total humiliation.

And May looked chipper because she didn’t have to relive her latest U-turn adventures through the wormhole into an 11th dimension where “a delay is a delay” didn’t mean a delay. That hospital pass was handed over to David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, who had to open the debate on why the government had nothing new to say about its Brexit negotiations.

Brexit is taking the same toll on Lidington as it is on everyone else. Where once he was one of the sharper minds in the cabinet – low bar, admittedly – he can now only talk in near-meaningless sentences riddled with contradictions. What makes this all the more painful to watch is that he is conscious enough to be aware he is talking nonsense.

He began by reiterating the government’s position that it didn’t really have a position other than to try to get the same deal that had already been rejected passed at the second attempt. After that, we were in the badlands of no deal or an extension of indeterminate length. He had no idea which and certainly wasn’t going to give any indication on how the government might vote on either of those options because he knew the prime minister well enough to know that whatever she had decided now would be contradicted later.

Lidington made sure to take plenty of interventions, hoping people would forget he didn’t have anything to say and delaying the greater disaster that was yet to come. Eventually he could delay the inevitable no longer. On to the amendments. Mutter, mutter, mutter. He wasn’t accepting the Cooper-Letwin amendment but he wasn’t opposing it either. So he was accepting it then? Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but yeah. Mutter, mutter, mutter. He was also accepting the Spelman amendment. Sort of.

Then the coup de grace. The government was going to accept the Costa amendment on citizens’ rights. Brilliant. Alberto Costa had been forced to resign as a parliamentary private secretary earlier in the day for tabling an amendment against the government that the prime minister had previously said she wouldn’t accept, only to find his amendment was now government policy and he was out of a job. Meanwhile, three cabinet ministers had written an opinion piece in the Daily Mail rubbishing the government’s Brexit policy and hadn’t been asked to quit.

Just another day in The Truman Show. The evening highlights package might even prove to be a ratings winner. After all, everyone loves a car crash.