Having endured the past few months in Brexit, how are you feeling about the prospect of the European elections campaign? Please rate your satisfaction on a scale of one to the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. These sailors got through the worst naval disaster in American history when their ship was torpedoed by the Japanese in 1945 and were then left bobbing in the Pacific Ocean. Subsequently, and over several days, they were subjected to the worst recorded shark attack in history.

The lesson of Brexit is that no matter how stomach-voidingly ghastly it feels, it can always, always get much worse

So yes, whichever way people voted in the referendum, the lesson of the Brexit process thus far is that no matter how stomach-voidingly ghastly it feels at any particular point, it can always, always get much worse. And, indeed, it will.

For your records, here is where we are as we enjoy the sunlit uplands of the bank holiday weekend. The notional prime minister Theresa May is on a break, hopefully coming up with another brilliant plan on a walking holiday; Labour has bravely refused to urge the shadow justice secretary to resign for apparently lying about an anti-Zionist rant; Nigel Farage is backer than back; and rejected hair-dye model Gerard Batten and his Ukip incels are offering hourly symposiums on rape threats and satire. Elsewhere, Change UK is failing to be the Change UK they want to see, and I’m afraid I can’t even talk about the Liberal Democrats. Maybe later, or something.

Meanwhile, the past couple of days have yielded up a couple of eye-catching polls. First came a YouGov one on European parliament voting intention, putting the Brexit party out in front on 27%, with the pro-remain parties (Lib Dem, Change UK and Green) mustering 25% between them. Next came a ComRes effort on voting intention in any EU referendum, which put remain on 58% and leave on 42%. Well, now. I know you come to this column for all your seriously granular psephological analysis, so let me summarise these two snapshots as “Wow, Nigel Farage’s helpfully named Brexit party is leading one poll less than a week after it launched!”; and “Wow, the biggest remain lead for three years!” Those wishing for a highly scientific synthesis of the two results are offered: “Wow, how badly will remain turn out to have shat the bed for these Euro elections?”

Barring an unexpected elevation to competence, it does feel like it’s going to be a question of degree. Since the disastrous snap election – in fact, since the referendum itself – the only entity to have had less of a strategy than the prime minister are the forces of remain. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the plan was. Ever since MPs voted to trigger article 50 by a majority of 498 to 114, apparently without a clue as to what that decision actually meant, developments on the remain side have felt best experienced as a sort of moodboard, rather than a series of coherent steps toward achieving a goal.

Play Video 2:10 'No more Mr Nice Guy': Nigel Farage launches Brexit party - video

One by one, over the almost three full years since the EU referendum, disparate things have been pinned on this moodboard. Let’s take a look at just a few of them. Item one: some rich and occasionally unlikable people act like they’re trying to litigate the result away. Item two: haute remainers continue to complain about the BBC. That’s a plan, right? Even if the leavers are doing it, too. To the victor, the spoils! Then, of course, are the little vignettes that somehow illuminate the entire process at any point. For instance, item three: Vince Cable, centrist leader of a remain party, misses a key Brexit vote in order to attend a London dinner party about the setting up of a new centrist remain party. Item four: a march by ordinary people, which at the 11th hour appears to give some MPs the confidence to say in public what they have long believed in private.

There are many other items on our moodboard, of course, but you get the idea with the general melange of all this. The last thing you could accuse the various factions of remain of is operating in a linear or remotely coordinated fashion, or cohering meaningfully around a position or electoral ticket. And so it is that barely a month out from elections that have been scheduled for the five years since the last ones, we are left with our latest scrap to pin to the moodboard. This item reads: “What do you mean, there are Euro elections, like, next month? I haven’t prepared anything! Oh my God, this is like an anxiety dream when you hear your cue and you’re meant to be on stage and you don’t know what on earth you’re doing.”

Nigel Farage’s Brexit party? Sorry but I’ll be washing my hair | Marina Hyde Read more

Until it was definitely clear that we were leaving the EU before the elections, all parties – particularly those who wished not to leave at all – should have had some clue about how they were going to fight them, if required, and what the likely stakes were. They seem to have had other ideas, which we can presumably expect to discover in the coming days and weeks. This is great news for those who look to the European elections as a crucial step in ushering in one or other new kind of politics, and not a grim-as-you-like basic dogfight in which that tweeded Red Baron is probably going to win. Ditto for anyone who regards the forthcoming ballot as just the forum to indulge the narcissism of small differences.

For other remain voters, the prospect feels less appealing. Still, I suppose it could be intriguing. As we wait for the unveiling of the various master plans, I am keen to hear from atomic scientists. Is it possible, under laboratory conditions, that there could be ways to split the remain vote even further?

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist