You'll no doubt always remember where you were when the Skycopter hovered over London, tracking the crawl of a mid-priced Rover containing Cleggbama, whose party had won a whole 1% more of the public vote than it did in 2005. Didn't the smallness of it feel so giggle-inducingly right? It was as if Britain's post-imperial decline into a piddling Cowellocracy had been condensed into a single piece of rolling news footage.

By mid-afternoon, Nick Clegg had kowtowed to David Cameron, while Cameron had patronised him, and Gordon Brown had stood outside No 10 holding a metaphorical "will work for food" sign. The scene was set for a version of the classic game theory problem, the prisoner's dilemma. In this non-zero-sum game, two people are forced into situations where the incentives are such that they choose against their own interest and both lose when, had they colluded, they would have won. Britain's three-way political version should really advance the form.

With the hung parliament result laid bare, the irony of Brown's idiotic wish for "an X Factor Britain" was yet again underscored. The prime minister, and indeed the other two main party leaders, may care to consider that a decade of apparently lobotomising reality shows has bred an electorate that is sophisticated at delivering humiliation, vengeance and laughs. Subconsciously or not, with this election result the voters have effected the political equivalent of forcing Katie Price to eat witchetty grubs in the jungle in penance for her ghastly public behaviour.

Oddly, given what we know of the beast, some could not contemplate the prospect of Brown resisting the pillow Peter Mandelson was even now believed to be placing over his face. "It's beginning to look a little undignified," ventured John Major. Beginning, Sir John? "I think the public would be flabbergasted," spluttered Conservative Ed Vaizey. Once it emerged that we'd forked out for some sod's moat to be cleaned, the public wouldn't bother gasting its flabber for anything less than the revelation that Gordon dined on sautéed kittens every night.

The public always knew the public was going to lose in this election: that has long been axiomatic. What no one had really dared to dream, though – even in light of the expenses scandal in which all three were implicated – was that every leader would lose as well. In any sane world (we're not in one, obviously) all three men would have resigned on the basis that they have failed in their stated mission. Every major party leader is badly wounded or, in the case of Gordon Brown, doing that chicken thing of continuing to walk despite having had its head cut off.

Glenn Close rearing up out of the bath in Fatal Attraction, Kathy Bates somehow righting herself after being brained with the typewriter in Misery: in searching for the Gordon analogue, you could basically take your pick. His lunchtime speech in Downing Street confirmed we were now living in the Bizarro World many had predicted would be the result of a hung parliament, but which seemed even more hilarious now we were there.

"I must make clear I would be willing to see any of the party leaders," Brown wheedled, reminding us that he is above all a guy whose entire political career has been about the free and humble exchange of ideas with his peers, as opposed to an obsession with cleaving power to himself so monomaniacal that it would occupy an entire symposium of psychiatrists.

Meanwhile, Cameron enticed Clegg with "a big, open and comprehensive offer". Even though the Tory leader thought the Lib Dems were cuckoo on everything from defence to Europe to immigration, and would rather staple his eyelids to the floor than give them PR (I paraphrase slightly), they totally had stuff like the pupil premium in common. What could possibly go wrong?

Doubtless we'll soon find out, because the two men opened telephone discussions sometime after Countdown. As for the Norma Desmond of Downing Street … well, he continues to wait for his close-up, presumably raging that it was the politics that got small.