”But his greatest ambition for England is this: the prince and his commonwealth should be in accord … a household where everybody knows what they have to do, and feels safe doing it.” The hopes of Thomas Cromwell, as imagined by novelist Hilary Mantel in Bring Up the Bodies, the second in her Tudor trilogy, were high even then; now, they seem laughably improbable. For who, in the present emergency, knows what they have to do? Not our elected leaders, nor us, it seems when it came to these European elections: rarely has a poll provoked as much bewildered debate about how best to ensure accurate representation of one’s political wishes.

Where is the man or woman who can discreetly manoeuvre the politicians?

Amid last week’s milkshake wars came Mantel, with news of the long-awaited conclusion of her masterwork. The final instalment, The Mirror and the Light, will be published next March. That may seem a long time away, but those who see writers, to adapt Shelley’s defence of poetry, as unacknowledged legislators of the world, might reflect that our current woes are unlikely to be behind us in a matter of months. Should they need a text that examines what happens when a country deliberately isolates itself from its neighbours and allows the fault lines in its population and its executive to yawn wide open, they will have one that runs to 864 pages for a mere £25.

Where, though, to find a contemporary Cromwell, the man who Mantel portrays as finding Machiavelli’s work a little too trite for his tastes?

Certainly not, on recent evidence, in the corridors of Westminster. Today’s crop of fixers, plotters and negotiators resemble the characters in a Feydeau farce far more strongly than they do skilled practitioners of realpolitik. Take, for example, the Conservative chief whip, Julian Smith, who has perfected his saturnine glower to little effect beyond sweeping in and out of meetings of the 1922 Committee before even legendary raconteur Mark Francois has time to reprise one of his celebrated wartime anecdotes. Or ponder the sight of the former defence secretary Gavin Williamson, UK politics’ very own Kenneth Widmerpool (though somewhat less successful and certainly slimmer than Anthony Powell’s bombastic meritocrat), chronicling his furious exile via snaps of himself eating a Big Mac and wowing audiences in St Austell and Newquay. Is the support of such a titan welcome to prime ministerial wannabe Boris Johnson?

In Bring Up the Bodies, Cromwell wearily reflects on the readiness of the populace to blame the rotten weather on Henry VIII and his concubine, Anne Boleyn; should Henry patch up his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, they believe, the rain will stop. “And indeed,” thinks Cromwell, “who can doubt that everything would be different and better, if only England were ruled by village idiots and their drunken friends?”

Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell is the man for this season | Thomas Penn Read more

Idiots and their drunken friends is not a way that any sensible person would or should characterise the electorate; and even so, the most intemperate or partisan observer ought to concede that each faction boasts its fair share of ne’er-do-wells. But it’s certainly true that Cromwell, triangulating between Rome, the monarchy and the noblemen, had to worry somewhat less about the man in the ginnel. Now, the puppet-masters must take into account a much broader political cast, one that encompasses everyone with a keyboard, a mobile device and a willingness to harangue members of parliament on College Green. In truth, we are all now subjected to infinite information and able to – indeed, keen to – broadcast our immediate responses to it. What we are, essentially, is a herd of ravenous political cats almost too numerous and various to corral.

But the point of statecraft is that it should be able to address all contingencies, even that of a country that has painted itself, with the twisty genius of a Michelangelo, into the most inescapable of corners. So where is the man or woman who can discreetly manoeuvre the politicians into a space where they are able to put aside personal ambition, rivalry, vengefulness and the fear of losing face in order to find a way forward?

A few months ago, one might have suggested the England football manager, Gareth Southgate; now we’re just as likely to plump for Jodie Comer in Villanelle mode. But whoever finds themselves lapping at the poisoned chalice can comfort themselves with the fact that, unlike Cromwell, their head won’t end up on a spike on London Bridge. These days, we just splash our enemies with a salted caramel drink or photograph them gently sobbing in the back of a Daimler.

• Alex Clark writes on culture for the Guardian and the Observer