Life as a grown-up person is busy. So busy that I’ve had too little time to write about the ferris wheel of fuck-wittery that has been the last 6 months of Brexit. But after the past week, I’ve decided I need to make time.

We are now in a land without map, all landmarks of familiarity finally lost beyond the horizon. The old rules seemingly don’t apply here. Except sometimes they do. Ditto the new rules, which is all the more impressive when you consider the fact they were made up in full knowledge of the old ones.

As a politics junkie, I can only assume this is what scientists would feel like if they accidentally cracked open another universe. What strange physics would they find staring back at them? How would they begin to translate them into anything meaningful? And physics guys – I wish you the very best of luck: it is as exhilarating as it is confusing.

It all started with Theresa May’s second attempt to get her deal through parliament. The deal was a free vote for Tory MPs, which was intended by May to 1) make her look democratic and 2) prevent an even bigger backbench rebellion breaking out. This… well, it didn’t.

This is largely because, in the context of reality, (1) is like giving the Reichstag a lick of paint to make it look more inclusive. More on (2) in a moment. Unfortunately, this was all lost on the Prime Minister. She has long abandoned reality in favour of somewhere less at odds with the details of her self-belief.

Then a Tory backbench MP – who were being allowed a free vote on the understanding they not misuse it by expressing the wrong opinion – tabled an amendment to the deal. The amendment simply stated that not only should we not allow no-deal to happen on 29th March 2019. We should not allow it to ever happen at all.

Caroline Spelman was the person to submit the amendment for selection. Once it had been selected, Tory party whips made it very clear she was completely free to choose to retract it. She had never even meant to submit it in the first place. That was her free choice. Entirely up to her to choose to do that.

I can only imagine their surprise when she then tried to retract it. And I can only imagine – and do, with great glee – the look on the Tory leaderships’ faces when John Bercow told her she couldn’t. Other people had signed up to the amendment and any one of those could move it for a vote if they wished.

You could almost hear Yvette Cooper smile to herself. The amendment passed.

Theresa Democratic Freedom May responded to this by revoking the free vote for her MPs. Clearly her MPs were going to take this ‘thinking for themselves’ much more literally than she’d intended it. So, they were now on a three-line whip to vote against the deal. May’s own deal. The one she was furious they’d already voted down by a landslide just weeks before.

This didn’t just cause a backbench rebellion. It caused a frontbench rebellion as well. On a three-line whip. Against the PM’s own motion, because of an amendment one of her own MPs had accidentally got voted through.

Being a member of cabinet and voting against a three-line whip is astonishing. It doesn’t happen. It’s… like being given an ankle tag for antisocial behaviour and then live-tweeting your journey on the way to murder your defence counsel. Or ordering veal sashimi at a vegan restaurant. It’s metaphorically and almost literally equivalent to squatting down to drop a log on your boss’s desk. While they’re using it.

It’s a very black and white situation, is what I’m trying to get at. Sometimes backbenchers will buck the whip, but to an extent that’s almost what they’re there for. Even then, very rarely a three-liner.

And… nothing happened. One person resigned, I guess because they foolishly assumed normal rules would apply. But nobody was fired. No-one. That’s not “the Prime Minister is having trouble controlling her party”. It’s “the Prime Minister has entirely lost control of government”.

In the end, May’s deal failed even with the amendment. But the point is, she has no respect from and no power over her own party. If she was facing anyone other than Jeremy Corbyn as opposition, a vote of no confidence would already have been called and won. We’d be having a General Election.

But no. And that was just last week. There’s a part two: the tale of the hero John Bercow, a man whom I sincerely hope is immortalised in statue. Not just for his services to sense and democracy, but also to poetic justice.

But that’s too much for one update. I’ll be back later with more on that. And maybe some guesses at what happens next. Hint: fuck knows.