As someone who once got a driving licence when they really shouldn’t have, I am looking forward to driverless cars. It’s a shame a lot of people will lose their livelihoods, but, hey ho, that’s the future. In fact, it feels a lot like the present. We currently have a driverless government. No one is in control – but nor is there a robotic system effective enough to govern us.

It is not just that the waxwork of Theresa May unveiled in Madame Tussauds looks more strong and stable – indeed, more human – than she does; it is that her government is full of braggarts, sexual harassers and people who have decided to conduct freelance foreign policies.

As ever with May, it is hard to ascertain why she wants to cling on. Her leadership is now little more than a penance to her party for not being good enough to secure a decent majority. She is surrounded by those for whom cooperation is some kind of socialist conspiracy and loyalty is for wimps. Many of her ministers wear their ignorance with pride, feeling that they can make policy in a ridiculously atomised way. They appear to have no clue how the rest of the world sees them – largely irrelevant – nor any clue of how the world is changing. In their myopic pomp, they seem not to have noticed that the US is in decline and still yearn for Reaganite certainties. This is bizarre.

Trust in our institutions is collapsing before our eyes. The Paradise Papers reveal the monarchy to be tax-avoiding hypocrites. Really? Who knew? At a certain level of wealth, many simply opt out of the social contract – for that is how taxation functions – and operate according to a model that says there is no such thing as society. Huge corporations do it. Sitcom stars do it.

The idea that this government can regulate this seems far away, because it is in such disrepair itself. The promise is that a Labour government can. Certainly it is becoming hard to imagine anything more shambolic and, indeed, venal than the current shower. Yet it seems deeper than this. As a nation, we have become essentially ungovernable, in ways that no one wants to admit.

At a certain level of wealth, many simply opt out of the social contract

Anarchy in the UK has come about because Brexit has split the country. There is no definite will of the people, just different peoples who refuse to acknowledge each other’s reality. Each side accuses the other side of delusion. The delusions of grandeur of the leavers are taking us over a cliff edge that will impoverish those who voted to leave, even if they voted that way because they felt no part of the future or wealth of this country. The delusion of the remainers is that everyone who voted leave now regrets it (they clearly don’t); is old and will die soon (the politics of culling); and that somehow this can all be stopped with another referendum, ignoring the fact that article 50 has already been triggered.

London remains free-floating, its own country with its own financial institutions. Scotland is remain, England is leave. Things are breaking up. The idea that Corbyn – said to be keen on a “socialism in one country” model – will sort everything out is another delusion. That country could be Islington, but it is certainly not the UK as it stands.

The centre cannot hold. Everything is pulling in directions that no longer reflect long-held right-versus-left positions, but rather reveal complex emotional and cultural reactions to globalisation and its handmaiden, austerity. The forces of which the referendum made us aware signified a desire for change, a critique of power as it exists today. They also represented a closing-down, an insularity – nasty racism in some cases – and a belief in the legacy of empire.

Leavers and remainers appear to inhabit different worlds and seem entirely resistant to compromise. Many remainers I know would happily sign up to border controls around the areas where they live and despise half their fellow citizens, yet they continue to see themselves as open-minded people. It is extraordinary.

I seek not to minimise the uselessness of this government. It is monstrous and pitiful. But these problems will continue whoever is in government, for the issue is this: the way we are governed is no longer fit for purpose. The institutions do not work for the people.

The instability at the heart of the government reflects the personal inadequacy of Tory ministers, but, politically, it runs deeper. When given a vote on something important, the majority of people voted against Westminster, against London, against the elites. Obviously, they have not taken back control, but what becomes clearer daily is that neither has the government. It is incapable of doing so. Its members are like children who shut their eyes and think no one else can see them. They lie, smear and dissemble as the UK falls apart.

This may not be anarchy as we imagined it, but the chaos at the top of our system is the reckoning. We are crashing in the same car.