The closer the Brexit doomsday clock ticks to midnight, the more of a certain type of machismo we get. I find it extremely encouraging. It suggests that if and when all else fails, the Brexit ultras can either fight or fuck their way out of this.

Happily, not one of them feels miscast in this hypersexualised action hero role. “How are you feeling tonight?” Sky News inquired of Steve Baker, who last week was wishing he could tear down parliament and bulldoze it into the Thames. “Well, everyone knows I’m Brexit hardman Steve Baker,” came the reply from the man everyone knows needed a cuddle off Jacob Rees-Mogg after the aforementioned ’dozer speech.

To me, Steve reads like a come-and-get-me plea to Game of Thrones’ Arya Stark

To me, Steve reads like a come-and-get-me plea to Game of Thrones’ Arya Stark, but we will deal with the rest of his posturing a bit later. For now, onwards to his equally virile ERG colleague Mark Francois, who you may know serves as Second Lieutenant in the Brexit Catering Corps (Territorial).

“My message to the chancellor is simple,” honked Mark, of Philip Hammond’s suggestion that Brexiters such as him not voting for Brexit was making a customs unions more likely. “Up yours!” Oh dear. I would like to say that Mark was last seen boasting about his penis size to readers of his local newspaper, but in reality that was at least 287 of his media appearances ago. Indeed, my message to the voters in Mark’s Rayleigh and Wickford constituency would be: thank you for your service. You guys basically elected a forehead vein. Mark is currently to be found bulging on TV three times an hour.

Barely had parliament said no to everything last night than Mark was barrelling toward the TV cameras to give us his Mark Francois once more. His bumptiousness is now so pronounced that it has passed into the clinical realm, and comes across as a kind of exhibitionism. He is compelled to reveal his stupidity to a camera. Mark Francois is the Westminster equivalent of one of those zoo chimps, probably driven mad by confinement, who furiously masturbate in front of tourists.

When the public inquiry into this full-spectrum political breakdown eventually convenes, it would be nice to think it may call a variety of psychologists as professional witnesses. By then, you can be sure, people will have had enough of having had enough of experts. The nation will deserve to know quite why Brexiters decided an intensely complex and nuanced matter was best understood in terms of the second world war or their own virility. Why was their penis or the Third Reich always treated as Brexit’s Rosetta stone?

As far back as last year, Boris Johnson was casting himself as the man “to put some lead in the collective pencil”. In the past month alone, we’ve had to deal with Geoffrey Cox’s codpiece, then the removal of the codpiece, to say nothing of the multi-episode, Will Self-triggered psychodrama starring the Francois genitals.

Alongside this is an increasing reliance on self-dramatisation. The overriding epithet for any Tory Brexiter is “self-styled”. Both David Davis and Francois have made preposterous amounts of hay out of their stints in the TA, while Davis famously claimed he had once been called a “charming bastard” on the front page of the Financial Times. In reality, the story was on page 19, and it was David who made the comment about himself.

Now we have self-styled “Brexit hardman Steve Baker”, who on Monday hotly set out all the compromises Brexiters have made. These turned out to be things such as accepting the government negotiators would have to negotiate “in secret”, and that the UK is currently – just – still in the EU. I guess Steve is all brawn and no brain, but honestly: these are not “compromises” – these are “realities”. Saying you’ve compromised with them is like me saying that as I sit here typing this I am compromising with gravity. Yes, Steve! I came to a very reasonable arrangement with gravity today, yesterday, and in all the days of this process, and that is why when I demand to spend tomorrow floating up to the pissing Clangers planet, I will be furious if gravity doesn’t throw me a bone. Come on, gravity – be “bold and creative”. Stop “bullying” me. The onus is on you, gravity, to show “ambition” about our future relationship.

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And yet, despite his insistence on presenting as a lone Chuck Norris, Steve’s attitude to compromise is of a piece with his party’s. For all the ire being levelled at the other parties, most of them have made significant compromises in recent days, or have not compromised simply because they are either so fledgling (Change UK) or so diminished (the Lib Dems) that to do so could finish them off. The Conservative party, as the newly ex-Tory Nick Boles MP pointed out yesterday, has been the least compromising, in the biggest numbers, and bears heavy responsibility from top to bottom for the crisis in which we find ourselves. A party that has spent this long in the realms of fantasy ought really to understand the laws of fiction better. Characters in stories who absolutely refuse to compromise – even in the face of Armageddon – usually struggle to survive the narrative.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist