There’s nothing quite like a constitutional crisis to expose what can only be described as the abject crapness of our political class.

The parliamentary Labour party has largely decided it has had enough of Jeremy Corbyn and wants a new ruler, but seems categorically unable to suggest anyone. Who would fit the bill? Dan Jarvis, who promises to be “tough on inequality, tough on the causes of inequality”? What does that even mean? Or how about Hilary Benn? He gave one well-delivered speech to parliament about Syria and people seemed to decide that made him the new Winston Churchill, before forgetting about him a week later.

There is talent in the Labour party, but barely any in the former disciples of Tony Blair, which is the wing of the party that set the ball rolling for the coup currently under way. Many of those MPs seem to think that what the country wants right now is a political middle manager to soundbite the country out of this quagmire, while also validating some of the racist sentiments of the leave campaign, naturally.

Then there’s the Tory party. David Cameron resigned and made himself a lame duck prime minister so he wouldn’t have to take part in Brexit negotiations, or “the hard shit” as he reportedly called it. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is attempting to strike a deal with the EU via a column in the Telegraph, and we’re left deciphering Michael Gove’s feelings from Sarah Vine’s Facebook posts. It’s fair to say that some in the leave campaign now appear not to want to leave after all. But their remorse has led to a giant buck-passing exercise, or as the Economist put it: “The country is sailing into a storm with no one at the wheel.” Although actually, since I started writing this, No 10 has announced that Oliver Letwin will be in charge of post-Brexit negotiations. Yes, that’s right – Oliver Letwin, a man whose most famous political act was to get photographed dumping sensitive documents in a bin in a park in central London. Good luck, Britain.

It's no surprise people feel alienated by politics. Brexit should be seen as an expression of that as much as anything

This total incompetence, this craven self-interest, this embarrassing fecklessness is what you get when you live in a country where political leaders are mainly selected via elitism rather than talent: 33% of MPs went to private school, and nearly a quarter went to Oxbridge. This doesn’t just end with members of parliament either: 43% of newspaper columnists and 26% of BBC executives were all educated privately. Oxbridge graduates make up 57% of permanent secretaries, 50% of diplomats, 47% of newspaper columnists, 44% of public body chairs and 33% of BBC executives.

It’s no surprise that people feel alienated by politics and locked out of democracy, and view the people who represent them as out of touch. Indeed, Brexit should be seen as an expression of that as much as anything else. But there is less discussion about what this elitism means for the quality of people who actually end up leading us and formulating political discourse. And this seismic crisis should change that, because it reveals that a lot of these people are basically defunct – obsolete in this new era of crisis.

Think of what has been happening in this country since 2008. In mainstream politics there has been virtually no analysis of what caused the financial crisis, no attempts to address the underlying structural problems in the economy, no retribution for the people that caused it, no serious attempt to stem widening inequality, no support for the people who lost their jobs during the recession, no viable solution to a worsening housing crisis, no hope for a generation of young people entering into an unstable, precarious economy.

The political class has done very little of worth since they bailed out the banks in 2008. And before that, it wasn’t exactly a bed of roses: there were still thousands of people feeling abandoned by politics up and down the country, reeling from de-industrialisation; there were the grotesque attempts by New Labour to appeal to middle England by treating the working class as voting fodder; the unwillingness to criticise free market capitalism and plastering over the cracks it caused.

This is not about individual politicians. Indeed, there are many who are talented – Ruth Davidson, Nicola Sturgeon, Caroline Lucas to name a few. But the political class as a whole, and how it functions alongside its outer circle of pundits, lobbyists, policymakers and so on, has proven itself to be woefully unqualified to cope with crisis as well as being utterly unable to comprehend the country it is supposed to be governing.

The consequences of this are already obvious: an electorate that is so angry and mistrustful of its leaders that it becomes susceptible to the likes of total charlatans such as Nigel Farage. And Farage may be dishonest, but make no mistake – he will capitalise upon this crisis by taking advantage of the ineptitude of the mainstream. He will, amazingly, lead the charge against broken promises. He will attract voters by vocalising their utter dissatisfaction with the mediocrity of their leaders. And then we will all lose.

To turn things around, the Westminster bubble will need to display a level of self-reflection that it has hitherto been incapable of. It needs to display humility, and recognise that it has got pretty much every major political event of the past five years completely wrong. It needs to display more than a cursory interest in ordinary people’s lives. And finally, it needs to find some way to guide the country out of this crisis – starting with a profound and sincere acknowledgement that the status quo before it was not good. Things are not good, and they need to be better. Start there.