Just hours after he had been deported a day early from the US, Boris Johnson found himself back in the Commons to give a statement on the supreme court’s judgment. One that he had never wanted or expected to give.

The Incredible Sulk came out angry. Sulk shouty. Sulk guilty. There was no contrition. No humility. A normal person would have ’fessed up and resigned. But this was the speech of a serial offender – the narcissistic sociopath – who couldn’t believe he’d been caught red-handed yet again. “I done nothing,” sulked Sulk. He had been fitted up. The supreme court had got it wrong. Technically he was innocent. The electronic tag fitted by Lady Hale the previous day proved otherwise.

Lie followed lie. Lying is one of the only things Boris can be trusted to do. The prorogation had been perfectly normal. The Brexit negotiations were well advanced. Everything was going splendidly. The real problem wasn’t him. It was everyone else in Westminster. So give him an election and allow him to break his word on avoiding no deal.

Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t stupid enough to fall for Classic Dom’s last roll of the dice. But even so, his response was half-arsed. To put it kindly. The Labour leader had the prime minister on the ropes. The government’s credibility and integrity were in tatters but he could barely lay a punch. This was two washed-up drunks getting lairy in a pub at closing-time.

The Tory benches cheered. But the applause was laden with desperation. They know Johnson is a fraud. They know they’ve made a mistake. Worse, they know they are complicit. They and Johnson are parasitic, their survival dependent on the other. But what neither realises is that they are in a death spiral, draining each other’s lifeblood. The eyes are already dead, their bodies hollowed-out shells.

This wasn’t even their nadir. That came when Johnson said, “humbug” in response to Labour’s Paula Sherriff mentioning the death of Jo Cox. An insult compounded by him insisting the only way to honour her memory was to deliver his Brexit. As if the reward for getting his way was that women would not be murdered. It was one of the most shameful episodes the Commons has witnessed in years. If Tory MPs had an ounce of integrity and self-worth they would force him to resign within hours. If.

But they don’t. Many may subconsciously long for a no-confidence vote in The Sulk. Just to have the chance to do one thing in which they believe. But they will be denied. Their self-hatred will tear them apart. The punishment for their failure is their continued existence on life-support under the unforgiving gaze of parliament. And what’s left of their consciences.

The Commons had reconvened in the morning with a short – as in not as long as many had feared – statement from the Speaker welcoming MPs back to their place of work. Then the first act of the day’s drama got under way. It was just that no one had told the attorney general if he was appearing in a tragedy or a farce as he answered an urgent question on his legal advice to the government over prorogation.

Little more than a year ago, Geoffrey Cox had been just another MP with a crazy dream. But then he had won Westminster’s Got Talent – exclusively available on Hacker House TV, just dial 0800 and get a recorded message redirecting you to a woman in Florida – and had become its leading actor. The man with the golden voice. A shining beacon of intelligence in a cabinet of low voltage mediocrities. Today he blew it. A Star has Died.

Cox began by channelling his inner Ibsen in An Enemy of the People. The supreme court had ruled and the government would abide by its decision. The outcome hadn’t been as he and other members of the legal team had hoped and it was a matter of deep, deep personal regret that he found himself unable to disclose what his own advice had been.

“No one is suggesting for a moment that the supreme court has staged a constitutional coup,” he declared, happy to make a passive-aggressive attack on Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had done just that 24 hours previously. Just for the fun of it. Shares in the leader in the house have steadily tumbled since he’s been elevated to the cabinet. Rees-Mogg shuffled awkwardly on the frontbench. Where was nanny when you needed her?

So far, so good. But then Cox spoiled it all by insisting the government had at all times acted in good faith. Not even the dopiest Tory backbenchers believed that. As if trying to cover up this schoolboy error, Cox then went full-on space cadet. What followed was Brian Blessed appearing in a village hall farce, while out of his head on acid.

The arms started flailing and spit dribbled from his lips as the hallucinations became ever more intense. Then he went into spasms and rolled on the floor. The spiders, the spiders! They were everywhere, crawling up the walls. The hollow laughs of 11 Lady Hales echoed in his head. Parliament was a dead parliament. An ex-parliament with no moral right to sit. The government couldn’t govern. Several MPs gently tried to talk him down by explaining the reason it couldn’t govern was entirely the government’s own fault for shedding 21 of its own MPs.

No luck. One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the ones that Boris give you don’t do anything at all. Parliament was just a waste of space. No one gave a shit about the domestic violence bill that could now be debated. Or about the Thomas Cook collapse. Hell, if you were poor enough to go on a package holiday then you deserved everything you got. Suckers. And why would anyone want to talk about Brexit?

A nurse came in to administer a vitamin C injection. Anything to help the comedown. But Cox was still ranting as he was escorted out the chamber. His dog, Lucy, put her paws over her eyes in shame. She’d told him to stick to a few joints. She’d got more sense out of him when he’d been down a K-hole in the recovery tent at Glastonbury. No wonder the government had lost in in the supreme court if he and Lord Keen were the best QCs on offer. Time to stockpile the dog food.