Who is the worst minor character in the Borisverse? We have to ask, what with the big man himself only allowed out on an electronic tag for around six minutes’ talking time on the BBC Tory leadership debate. Collectors of vignettes displaying Johnson’s contempt for the public will have enjoyed the spectacle of a takeaway being delivered to his house while the other candidates debated on Channel 4. Encouraging to see him building on his friend David Cameron’s legacy: trotters up even before you’ve screwed the country, instead of only after.

The only other sightings of Johnson saw him accompanied by various childminders to vote for himself in a series of progressively apocalypse-beckoning votes in Westminster this week. Eventually, of course, Johnson himself will come for us all. He’s really the Tories’ Papa Lazarou, with his grotesque circus, his free-form gibberish, his expanding collection of wedding rings. And the rest. AND THE REST.

I wonder if proxying for Boris feels a bit less unspeakably awful every time they go out and do it

For now, though, he is represented by a praetorian guard of beta proxies, who make the rounds of the news programmes for him, interpreting what they think their overlord stands for on questions such as Brexit practicalities, and why you wouldn’t play a meaningful part in your own child’s upbringing. Hey – it’s a living. But is it a life?

Maybe this is what you get into politics for. On the other hand, is there a less self-respecting role in public life than being the guy who goes on the radio to flounder about some other guy’s inability to wear a condom? This is effectively the situation in which hopelessly out-of-his-depth Plymouth Moor View MP Johnny Mercer found himself on Monday, repeatedly pressed by Emma Barnett on whether it wasn’t a bit weird that we didn’t know how many children the likely next prime minister would own up to having. Great chance to shine, and let’s hope Johnny gets Johnson’s equivalent of a DSO for it. Number two at defence?

Or perhaps you have more admiration for fellow Johnson proxy Kwasi Kwarteng, who appeared on Channel 4 news to fume: “The idea he is racist is completely ridiculous. To say he is racist is scurrilous, offensive and completely wrong.” I wonder if proxying for Boris feels a bit less unspeakably awful every time they go out and do it. Maybe the proxies get endless free vodka to get them through the horror, like the guys shooting dogs in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Even so, you’ve got to think a lot of this work is going to stay with you for the rest of your life.

Asked if he would buy a used car from Johnson, Nadhim Zahawi trilled: “I would buy anything from Boris Johnson!” In that case, I have a garden bridge to sell you. Also some water cannon, and a line about NHS funding.

Or how about Matt Hancock? Eleven days ago, Matt launched his own leadership campaign as “the candidate of the future”, declaring that choosing between Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove would be like “asking me to choose between my children”. But it was bad news for the Hancock kiddies, in the end, as Daddy decided to back Boris Johnson instead. Yup, here comes Cuck Rogers, back from the future to delude himself that Johnson has made the same assurances to him as he has to Steve Baker.

We must assume the Westminster proxies are all being run by Gavin Williamson, contrary to a welter of reports about 10 minutes ago that Gavin was completely finished in politics.

But in the media, Johnson backers such as George Osborne have only themselves to blame. Meanwhile, there is a very particular type of chap who goes in to bat for the Old Etonian Johnson with the somewhat tragic deference of a man who knows his own public school was one of the minor ones. This peculiar type of longing underpins much of the writing of Quentin Letts (Haileybury), with his most recent Sun column a case in point. Here he is on Johnson: “At an age when some blokes find their virility drooping, he still plainly has some lead in his pencil, with a new and much younger girlfriend … He has swanned through life breaking the rules, laughing and bonking. That INFURIATES [the elite]!” Always a pleasure to take lectures on “the establishment” and “the elite” and “the ruling class” from Rupert Murdoch’s highest-paid columnist.

And with that, I fear we can avoid the columnist question no longer. I had an instructive online exchange with the aforementioned Johnny Mercer this week, during which he broke the habit of a lunchtime and mentioned his military service, adding in parenthesis “(you were probably writing columns)”. Probably. And I naturally share Johnny’s disdain for newspaper columnists, most especially myself. However, only one of us wants a newspaper columnist to become prime minister.

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In the end, little encapsulates the stage-four clusterfuck the UK is facing as totally as the fact that it is about to be run by a journalist. And, incredibly, by the worse of the two journalists in the final three.

Why are we getting journalists to run anything? What’s the rationale – that now they’ve torched their own industry, they should be allowed a go on the country? If the past couple of decades have shown us anything, it’s that journalists shouldn’t really have been in charge of even the journalism business. It is far from a coincidence that two of the leading architects of Brexit – Michael Gove and Johnson – were both journalists. Is it in any way surprising to find that the UK is very drunk and has already missed two deadlines?

As for all Johnson’s proxies and the backers who should know so much better: every one of them must carry the mark of Cain when it goes tits up, as it assuredly will. It’s like the old saying goes: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me literally hundreds of times, shame on me.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist