It has happened: Jacob Rees-Mogg has gone from being a joke to a serious contender for a senior role within the Tory cabinet. At the weekend it was whispered that a “dream team” (few quote marks have done heavier lifting) of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Rees-Mogg would be fielded by Eurosceptics against Theresa May if her stance on the customs union were to soften.

In this first iteration, Rees-Mogg would be chancellor, but talk of him becoming prime minister is no longer seen as farcical. We conjured him into being by laughing at him. It’s like a spell gone wrong. In the search for an alternative to a paralysed prime minister, for someone who could guide the country through its most challenging negotiations since the second world war, we have somehow veered towards a person whose views are preserved in prehistoric amber.

We no longer have the luxury of certainty, no longer the indulgence to laugh at or dismiss the politically absurd, just in case an extreme rightwing anachronism really is elected. Every internal scuffle in the Tory party is another round of Russian roulette for the country, except the gun has no empty chambers. With Brexit, the unthinkable is not only thinkable: it is inevitable.

In The Imp of the Perverse, an essay on unwanted impulses, Edgar Allan Poe wrote: “That single thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable longing.” This impulse seems to be the governing principle of our politics since the referendum.

It’s enough to give you whiplash, living in this time when political fortunes wax and wane almost overnight. When farcical leftfield options such as Andrea Leadsom suddenly become horrifying possibilities and credible stable establishment politicians like Theresa May suddenly fall apart. But Rees-Mogg is on the rise not only because he seems to be the only weed capable of flourishing in the toxic Brexit soil, but because there is something, in these base political times, genuinely transcendent about him.

Bear with me. Yes, his entire purpose is to validate the most irresponsible populist myths about an immaculate, uncompromising no-deal Brexit – but he manages to carry himself in a way that, if not open-minded, is at least straightforward and dignified. When challenged at a speaking event at the University of the West of England last week – an episode that ended in a messy fracas – Rees-Mogg did none of the things we are now accustomed to.

He didn’t call the protesters snowflakes; he didn’t accuse them of being hard-left saboteurs of free speech. In fact, he stressed that freedom of speech to oppose him should be upheld. As he told the BBC: “There were 300 people here who wanted to engage in a serious debate and discussion. There were four or five people who wanted to shout, but they only wanted to shout. They weren’t physically threatening. A little bit of shouting doesn’t do anybody any harm … I take a very relaxed view of it.”

Rees-Mogg does not hesitate to indulge in irresponsible attacks on civil servants, lately accusing the Treasury of “fiddling the figures”, but he has won grudging respect for how he remains above the fray.

If this sounds like clutching at straws, that’s because it is. The bar is low. Brexit bandwagon careerists such as Michael Gove would rather deflect, dissimulate, hedge and filibuster than engage. The rest, May included, just hedge. None of this is lost on the public. Rees-Mogg’s odds of becoming the next Conservative leader have now tumbled to 4-1. Anna Soubry can rant as much as she likes, calling this week for May to sling out Rees-Mogg and his crew, but the whole party created a clearing for him. They empowered him. He is no more alien to Conservatism now than Soubry is.

Rees-Mogg is the perfect politician to fill a vacuum: a mixture of genuine antiquity, in manner and values, and confected confidence. Even his coy demurring when asked about becoming prime minister increases his stature against the backdrop of a party in which the daggers seem to be permanently drawn. Those who think that his hardcore views – on abortion for example (not even in the case of rape) or gay marriage (“I take my whip from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church rather than the whips’ office) – endear him to Tory extremists but alienate the wider public may be mistaken. Where some people hear misogyny or homophobia, others hear patrician certainty.

In these times of confusion, when even Labour can’t offer an unambiguous position on Brexit, conviction is nine tenths of the law. Rees-Mogg’s lofty righteousness is both his strength and his danger. His privilege underwrites his breezy political adventurism, but also his composure and grace under fire. He is Jeremy Corbyn’s equal in authenticity, but with added clarity.

The elevation of Rees-Mogg demonstrates not only the crisis within the Tory party, but also what is missing in public discourse. He is a chicken coming home to roost, a symptom of our hollowed-out politics, and of a right wing hijacked by Brexit. There is much to fear from a man such as him, but there is also much to learn.

• Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist