Stressed out by Brexit? I have a mindfulness exercise for you, one guaranteed to bring calm. Instead of imagining a deep, cool lake or a beach of bone-white sand, comfort yourself by imagining the day, several years from now, when a Chilcot-style inquiry probes the epic policy disaster that was Brexit. As you take deep breaths, and with your eyes closed, picture the squirming testimony of an aged David Cameron under sustained interrogation. Look on as Boris Johnson is at last called to account for the serial fictions of the 2016 campaign. Or perhaps contemplate the moment the panel delivers its damning, final report, concluding that this was a collective, systemic failure of the entire British political class.

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Last night’s series of votes in the Commons will provide a rich batch of evidence. Almost everyone involved, from both main parties, showed themselves to be immersed in delusion, trading fantasies and absurdities, each one refusing to meet reality’s eye, let alone tackle it head on.

Most culpable, once again, is the prime minister. If our jaws weren’t already slackened to numbness by the last 30 months, they should have hit the floor at this latest performance. Theresa May had repeated endlessly, and for weeks, that her deal was the only deal on offer. Yet there she was, standing at the despatch box urging MPs to vote for an amendment that trashes that very same deal. The Brady amendment, which passed by 16 votes, demands what May had constantly said, up until yesterday morning, was impossible: the replacement of the Northern Irish backstop with “alternative arrangements”. It’s an extraordinary thing, this ability of May’s: she somehow manages to combine grinding intransigence with a willingness to perform the most brazen U-turns.

Cheering her on was a Conservative party celebrating the rare thrill of unity. For the first time in ages, they could all be on the same side, declaring with one voice that what they really wanted was May’s deal minus the backstop. They beamed as if this result meant something, when it is in fact triply meaningless.

First, it’s really no great achievement to get MPs to agree that they’d like the good bits of a deal but don’t want to swallow the bad bits: yes to the sugar, no to the pill. The Tories have united around a position that says they’d like the benefits of the withdrawal agreement, without paying all the costs.

It’s the familiar Brexit delusion, which Brussels took all of six minutes to crush, by declaring – for the millionth time – that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” In other words, what the Daily Mail calls “Theresa’s triumph” is to have got her party to unite behind a stance that is doomed to fail.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It’s an extraordinary thing, this ability of May’s: she somehow manages to combine grinding intransigence with a willingness to perform the most brazen U-turns.’ Photograph: Mark Duffy/AP

But even on its own terms, the vote is hollow. For what did MPs vote for but “alternative arrangements”? Not a specific, detailed counter to the backstop, spelling out concrete ways that a hard border might be avoided, but the nebulous promise of an “alternative”. When you don’t like x, then “not x” looks mighty alluring, not least because it can mean whatever you want it to mean.

Brexiteers know the truth of that, because it was that same logic that saw them win the referendum itself. Their message back then boiled down to: do you want to stay in the European Union, with all its concrete, visible flaws, or would you like “alternative arrangements”? What we’ve all learned since is that the moment an “alternative” becomes real, it loses its all-things-to-all-people appeal. Which means that, even if Brussels were to relent and offer a revised proposal to the backstop, the new plan would enrage as many people as it would please – and would likely face rapid rejection by the Commons, by the Brexiteers swiftest of all.

But the obloquy should not belong to the Tories alone. MPs had the chance to prevent the national cataclysm of a no-deal crash-out last night – and they refused to take it. They rejected Yvette Cooper’s amendment, which would have made such an exit impossible, thanks in part to 14 Labour rebels who concluded that even a slight delay to Brexit – just a few months – poses more of a threat to their constituents than a crash-out that could see shortages of food and medicine, with more warnings along those lines coming this morning from the leader of a major hospitals group. The future public inquiry into this horror show will damn those 14 especially.

Instead, MPs voted for a toothless, non-binding amendment that confirms they don’t like no-deal very much, but are ready to do precisely nothing to prevent it. And while the Tories are still chasing unicorns, Labour is in its own fantasyland. Incredibly, shadow cabinet minister Richard Burgon was on TV last night still mouthing the same vacuities about “Labour’s alternative” Brexit and how it’s going to negotiate a “strong single-market relationship” – all the benefits, none of the costs – as if there isn’t only a matter of weeks to go till Britain leaves the EU. This just 24 hours after the party had embarrassed itself by planning to abstain on Tory legislation ending the free movement of people, only to reverse position 90 minutes later following a backlash on Twitter.

The Sir John Chilcot of the future will note all this, even as she or he exempts the handful of MPs who are using every parliamentary wile they can to stop the country from slamming into the iceberg. The names Grieve, Cooper, Boles and others may earn themselves an admiring footnote in the report that will eventually come. But as for almost everyone else: they will be slammed for their role in a saga that disgraces this country and its supposed leaders more with each passing day.

• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist