It’s come to something when Theresa May regards prime minister’s questions as a bit of light rest and recreation. Not that the Labour leader is going out of his way to make things easy for her. Just that life within the Tory party has now descended into near farce.

With almost every member of the cabinet engaged in open warfare with another minister, May can no longer bring herself to switch on the radio; she can’t bear to hear the latest blue-on-blue action. When even Liz Truss feels bold enough to get stuck in, the game is near enough up. The prime minister without authority. The woman without qualities.

Corbyn began as if he only had to remain conscious to score an easy win. In the ongoing battle between Greg “Mr Business” Clark and Boris “Fuck Business” Johnson, whose side was she on? That was easy. Right now everyone hates Boris. There are signs that even Boris might hate Boris.

Inside every narcissist there’s a torrent of self-loathing waiting to be unleashed. A blonde amoral blob of self-pity in desperate search of a single principle over which he could resign to become the hero of his own narrative. So, yes, in a straight fight between Boris and Anyone Else in the Entire World, May was on the side of Anyone. Even Corbyn. But especially business. She loved business.

That was odd, the Labour leader continued, because business didn’t seem to love her. How did she explain that the CBI, Airbus, BMW, Siemens and Honda were all so worried about the way the government was handling Brexit they had gone public with their concerns?

“We are very clear,” May said, reverting to her default algorithm. “We are listening to business.” The problem was that she didn’t much like what she was hearing, so had chosen to ignore it. What the people had voted for was a government that was at war with itself. One that was unable to even agree on a future trading relationship that the EU had already rejected. One that was so dim it hadn’t yet understood that a no deal was the worst possible deal. So that was the type of leadership she was determined to show.

Round about now, Corbyn seemed to lose concentration. Admittedly not hard to do when faced with the prime minister’s very obvious confusion and limited grasp of language, but the country needs rather more of an opposition leader at PMQs. It is only 15 minutes each week, after all. Many Labour backbenchers sensed Corbyn’s moment had passed and started playing with their phones. With the Tories in the mess they are, Labour should be winning in style, not scraping through on penalties after a messy 0-0 draw. May’s jibes that, as a Brexiter himself, Corbyn may be closer in spirit to Boris than his own party had more than a ring of truth.

“We are putting jobs at the heart of what we do in relation to Brexit,” the prime minister insisted. Her own and the rest of her cabinet’s. Most of them would struggle to find alternative work. She ended by reciting a list that one of her advisers had written out for her of all the government’s achievements. It didn’t take long. There was a plan to end childhood obesity with a childhood obesity plan. There other plans to do various other things that hadn’t quite materialised. They were going to create a Britain fit for the future. Fit to do what was anyone’s guess.

It was left to Labour’s Mary Creagh to ask the killer question. Would the prime minister congratulate the foreign secretary for expressing what her hard Brexit would do to business? May’s eyes rotated manically but no coherent words came out. After that, Labour rather let the Tories do what they liked doing best. Warring among themselves in public. Greg Hands took a swipe at the speaker before going studs up on Boris, while Heidi Allen stamped on Chris Grayling’s already battered body. May joined in gratefully. Anything to keep the wolves away from her.