Where are you on Steve Baker, on a scale of one to so-completely-over-him? The deputy chair of the European Research Group took to the airwaves today to warn mildly that parliament passing Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement would “collapse the government”. Furthermore, Baker complained: “I really do rather object to being called ‘hardline’.”

Oh dear. Given the need to find alternative arrangements for describing Steve Baker, let’s look at technological solutions. It’s as if someone had half an idea to build a fun, geeky robot sidekick for Jacob Rees-Mogg, then became so bored or repulsed by the task that they gave up before they’d fitted him with a cool metallic exoskeleton. Somehow, the unfinished unit picked itself off the workshop floor and found its way to parliament. By rights, Steve Baker is just the innards of something that – had it been completed – you might find in the background of a Mos Espa docking-bay scene in The Phantom Menace. Instead, he’s one of the fanatics holding our national destiny in his partially assembled hands. The more versatile politicians of this golden age have two expressions; Steve Baker has one. Steve Baker’s sole expression is cocking his head slightly to the side as if to say “I’m listening politely and reasonably”, when what he is actually saying is, “Let’s just fucking burn it all down and see what happens.”

Williamson sees Grayling get a Calais asbo, and promptly gets trade talks with China cancelled. Game recognise game

And so to Thursday’s vote in parliament – another absolute el clásico. To be able to watch these two sides at the peak of their talents is to … nope, I’m sorry, can’t go on with that one. José Mourinho once advanced to a Champions League final after a match in which his side had just 19% of possession, and May’s Brexit strategy has always pinned its hopes on something similar. In vain. Unfortunately, to put it in terms both would instinctively understand, Rees-Mogg has been imposed on May as director of football.

Along with the rest of the ERG, Rees-Mogg and Baker are still claiming the solution is the Malthouse compromise. This is easily the most ludicrously far-fetched one in the whole franchise. If you’re keeping rankings, it goes: The Malthouse Ultimatum, The Malthouse Identity, The Malthouse Supremacy, The Malthouse Legacy, then lastly The Malthouse Compromise. Shouldn’t even place.

If the circumstances were less deadly serious, British politics would resemble one of those terrible British comedies whose opening-weekend box office is £345, and later turns out to have been designed solely as a complex investment vehicle designed to liberate Gary Barlow from his tax obligations. Unsurprisingly, the Dutch foreign minister this week spoke of growing dismay in European capitals. You might remember the EU butter mountain and the EU wine lake; say hello to the EU dismay ocean. We’re drowning in it.

Maybe a passing ferry will save us? In Greek mythology, you paid the ferryman to cross the River Styx. Brexit mythology is more complex. There is no ferryman – indeed, there are no ferries – but Chris Grayling pays £800,000 to management consultants to get told this, and somehow doesn’t go to hell. The transport secretary won’t even be going to Calais, having been told he wasn’t welcome at the port last week by its chairman.

Or perhaps a warship will save us? On Monday, Gavin Williamson – who bagsied the role of Iceman in the year 9 Top Gun musical – threatened to send a warship to China. On Thursday, as a result, China pulled out of trade talks with the UK. So Williamson sees Grayling get a Calais asbo, and promptly gets trade talks with China cancelled. Game recognise game.

And yet, the Tories continue to poll ahead of Labour. It’s always encouraging to hear Corbyn boosters honk about how much they’d expect him to put on in a campaign situation. The slightly incredulous response has to be: um, yes?! I should hope so?! I mean, you would hope that anyone might improve on losing to a party that is essentially a gif of someone lighting their own fart and then being consumed by the fireball. Against that sort of competition, you would expect to be able to run one of the more divisive Sesame Street Muppets – ie Elmo – and put on a few points. It’s hardly a kitemark.

My generation trashed the planet. So I salute the children striking back | George Monbiot Read more

As for how the rest of the week was spent, there’s a point at which politicians’ preoccupations cease to be curiosities and tip over into the realm of horrifying psychiatric diagnoses. Kurt Vonnegut wrote his satirical novel Cat’s Cradle after becoming troubled by what he saw as the indifference of pure scientists contributing their theoretical work towards the development of practical horrors such as the atomic bomb. The title referred to the childish game he imagined one of these rarefied individuals playing right at the moment the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. If we crash out of the EU without a deal, I hope someone publishes a coffee-table book detailing each of the irrelevant arguments we had on each day as the Brexit doomsday clock ticked down. T-minus 42 days: was Churchill a shit or not? T-minus 41 days: where do you stand on the Boer war?

There is something truly grotesque about all this playing out as children around the country and the world strike from school to protest against climate emergency. In Westminster, a generation who will never be forgiven don’t even have the thing they won’t be forgiven for on their radar. It is left, shamefully, to actual kids to point it out. With absolute ironicidal inevitability, then, May made the time to criticise the nation’s young for their actions. Apparently, the climate strike “wastes lesson time”. Just to be clear, Prime Minister, on Thursday a party colleague requested an emergency parliamentary debate on Winston Churchill, who literally DIED IN 1965. Can you grown-ups give the kids another lecture on time-wasting, please? And if there’s any time before Brexit left after that, how about a game of cat’s cradle?

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist