It wasn’t exactly the Oval Office. Or even the LBC studio. But the shadow of Donald Trump hung heavy over the half-full church hall in central London where the Brexit party had gathered to launch its general election campaign. Though the setting was low-key, the madness was off the scale, with levels of narcissism and delusion that made Boris Johnson look almost normal. It was in equal parts both comical and terrifying that politics has been reduced to this. The banality of mediocrity raised to an art form.

As so often before, it was the Brexit party’s chairman, Richard Tice, who had volunteered to be the day’s compere. The man with the forlorn insincerity of a Shopping Channel presenter moved from the primetime midday gig to the graveyard 3am slot. Tice still dreams of making it big, of being a real player in British politics, but has yet to realise the Brexit party indulges his fantasies mainly because he is loaded.

Tice began by trying and failing to persuade himself that the Brexit party had a few policies other than bankrupting the country with a no-deal Brexit. Heads went down even among the few Brexit supporters who had bothered to turn up for the event. Westminster politics was rotten to the core, he said. Which means he should be right at home there.

What really stuck in his throat, though, was politicians who switched parties. That’s what really destroyed his faith in democracy. At which point the former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe stood up to deliver her familiar Ann Widdecombe parody tribute act. The superannuated politician who built a career out of being wrong about almost everything and has no intention of changing now. The embarrassing elderly relation who becomes that bit more nationalistic with every breath she takes.

Ann Widdecombe. Photograph: Mark Thomas/ReX/Shutterstock

To complete the surreal weirdness of the Electric Kool-Aid Bad-Acid Test, we had Claire Fox, one of the main organisers of the Revolutionary Communist party and now a Brexit party MEP. Fox likes to think she is a libertarian, but at heart she is still an old Trot who believes the only liberties that should be allowed are the ones she prescribes. She radiates the righteous anger of someone who knows that everyone but her is wrong.

Then came Nigel Farage. The leader of the Brexit party’s ego is now so large that he can’t bear to share a platform with any of his shock troops. There just isn’t enough room. Rather, he prefers to hang around at the back of the hall out of sight until his entrance is announced and then march to the microphone flanked by two well-muscled bodyguards. Even when the only thing he is in danger of being mobbed by is his own insecurities.

Nigel began with his familiar tropes of betrayal and surrender before lapsing into full-blown sociopath. As if he had been infected by his closeness to the US president over the past week and has come to believe in his own Sunbed God divinity. The increasingly orange Farage claims his Brexit is about delivering the will of the people but it increasingly resembles the glorification of the self. A one-man publicity-hungry roadshow, the Worshipper of the Self, who will say and do almost anything for attention, who only feels alive when there are cameras present and crumples in self-doubt when he returns to solitary.

Even his language has come to resemble that of the US president. Boris Johnson’s deal was a bad deal, a very bad deal, one of the very baddest of bad deals in the history of bad deals. Jeremy Corbyn was a bad man, a very bad man who would do very bad things, the baddest things imaginable. Only he – the Great Nige – could deliver the One True Brexit.

So here was his once in a lifetime offer. If Boris were to publicly prostrate himself before him and his bodyguards and admit that his Brexit deal was a crock of shit and swear allegiance to the One True No Deal Brexit, then Nigel would be willing to consider a non-aggression pact and ease his passage back to No 10. But if Johnson declined this golden opportunity he would be crushed by Farage’s people’s army. As indeed would Nige himself. Far better to have no Brexit than the wrong sort of Brexit.

This could have been a meeting of Brexiters Against Brexit Anonymous. Richard T, Anne W, Claire F as relative newcomers getting their six-month keyrings and Nigel F acting as Remain’s trump card in his role of group chair. “My name’s Nigel and I am powerless over my self-destruction.” The man who can’t bear the fact that other versions of Brexit may exist and whose search for significance only renders him ever more insignificant, and who will not rest until the annihilation of himself and those around him is complete.

John Crace’s new book, Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse, is published by Guardian Faber. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.