Finally a breakthrough. After years of searching for a format that might cut through with the audience at home, Jeremy Corbyn struck gold. Rather than bothering with longwinded statements that invariably petered out and only occasionally ended with a question, the Labour leader opted for his own version of University Challenge.

Your starter for 10. What do the National Farmers Union, the Federation of Small Businesses, the National Housing Federation, single parents charity Gingerbread and the Royal Society of Arts have in common?

A look of bewilderment passed across the prime minister’s face. She glanced sideways at her cabinet colleagues for any signs of help. They all avoided her gaze. Rules were rules. No conferring. Realising that silence was not an option, she eventually pressed the buzzer. St Hugh’s, May. “Um, er, um,” Theresa May mumbled. I’m going to have to hurry you. Um, they were all very worthy organisations with which the government had good interactions.

“Wrong,” yelled Corbyn triumphantly, affecting his best Paxman sneer. The right answer was that they all thought the government’s rollout of universal credit was a total disaster. Next question.

If the Labour leader had continued in a similar vein it would have been box-office gold. What name is that of an Arian Christian Germanic people who maintained a North African kingdom in the fifth and sixth centuries and who, under their king Gaiseric, sacked Rome in 455 and might also be applied to Boris Johnson. Come on St Hugh’s, I’ve got to have an answer. Too late. The answer is Vandal. Four more questions like this and the prime minister could have experienced her worst humiliation since her party conference speech last year.

Instead, Corbyn went back to his traditional mode of attack and continued to press May on universal credit. And, to be fair, it wasn’t a bad second best. Mostly because he was on impregnable ground as even the government’s own agencies think the government’s handling of UC has been utterly abysmal. Would the prime minister like to agree with the National Audit Office report that says the government has been throwing more families into poverty?

As it happened, she wouldn’t. Instead she chose to take a leaf out of Corbyn’s own book by quoting a constituent named Roberta who was eternally grateful to universal credit. It wasn’t a wholly successful diversionary tactic. When the Labour leader cites individuals they are understood to represent many thousands of people like them. May merely sounded as if she had lucked out and found the one person in the country who had a positive experience of UC.

The exchanges ended with Corbyn reciting an irrefutable catalogue of government failures which the Tories could only respond to by sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “La, La, La” as loudly as possible. It wasn’t a great look to see the Conservative benches trying to shout down the Labour leader while he stood up for the poor and the disabled, but May appeared rather reassured. It was the biggest show of support she has had from her party in months.

It has also been the prime minister’s level of support that appeared to be uppermost in the mind of Jacob Rees-Mogg in recent days. After the complete Dadaist clusterfuck of their economic Brexit plan the previous day and an evening meeting when the Provo lunatics momentarily took over the asylum, the European Research Group has had a reality check. Boris, their leader in waiting, has been exposed as a hollow man whose commitment even to himself is wavering, and they just don’t have the clout to bring down the prime minister and impose their Brexit vision.

No wonder, then, that their event to explain their solution to the Irish border had the feel of the morning after the night before. The Day of the Living Dead. Theresa Villiers, Owen Paterson, Maria Caulfield, David Trimble and David Davis sat behind a table with the expression of people who had only just realised they had volunteered to appear in their own hostage video.

No one had much to say. “There’s nothing new here,” said Paterson, a man more used to being outwitted by badgers. “It’s all really boring.” For once he was telling the truth. The ERG had come up with not much more than ideas for an exciting development in international borders that existed nowhere else in the world and had already been rejected by both the EU and the UK.

It was Davis who looked the most depressed. Normally he can manage a smile even in extremis. Now he was just crushed. There was a time when he had been a contender. Out of his depth, maybe, but still a contender. Now he was just out of the loop. He had given up a career to throw in his lot with a bunch of losers and psychos who didn’t have a prayer. The numbers just didn’t stack up. If only he had been better at maths.

• This article was amended on 13 September 2018. Due to an editing error the word “Aryan” appeared where “Arian” was meant.