Poor Jeremy. Not long ago he was elected to lead the Labour party, to see if he could rediscover a set of core beliefs for the party to bruit abroad, and to blow the dust off its conscience – that is, if he could find these things in the dusty old cupboards where they had been left years earlier. Our choice was either Jeremy, who appeared to believe in things, or a list of people who came across as knowing everything about management and marketing, but very little about anything else. (There are lots of people like that around – people suffer them in their workplaces every day.) So, though we had reservations about competence and effectiveness, we voted for him.

Then came his first big public test. Unfortunately for him, it was to front up his party’s support for the Remain campaign – something he didn’t seem to believe in. For him, the EU still seems to be that Bennite bugbear of ‘bosses’ Europe’. So how did he deal with that quandary, and what kind of leadership did he give? Well, he avoided the issue by becoming a backbencher again. Not only did he not lead, he appears to have actively worked against his own party’s policy, undermining the workers out on the streets and doorsteps and betraying the young voters who we are told are his main supporters. There was even a rumour he voted Leave himself, until the news item resurfaced of him saying he voted Remain; that in itself is a sign of the current atmosphere inside the PLP – brief and counter-brief, rumour and counter-rumour.

If a backbencher follows his or her beliefs and campaigns against their own party on an issue, or even votes against it, that’s routine. If a leader does this, it’s a fatal incoherence. If you take on the responsibility of leading a party – a great party, or a once-great party, depending on your view – you can’t simply revert to acting like a backbencher every time the going gets tough. If you can’t in all conscience lead on the party’s main issues, you have to stand aside.

Now we can only sit back and watch in horror as an unfunny farce plays out before our eyes. A constant stream of shadow office resignations is followed by a constant stream of their instant replacements. People should avoid walking around Westminster over the next few days – you may find yourself dragged off the streets and pressed to join the shadow cabinet. You could be the next shadow assistant under-secretary for allotment water supplies.

Jeremy looks to be finished as party leader – poor chap, to repeat the platitude. Some of the things being said about him are no doubt unfair and misleading and originate with his political enemies, but he’s lost the PLP and out in the country his support is ebbing. That’s the reality of it, and it’s what voters will see. Nor is it good enough to present the PLP as just a bunch of obstructive reactionaries – there is a vast range of political experience and competence in there – or say things like it’s ‘only’ the PLP that is against Jeremy as if they’re a peripheral bunch of minor significance, and one that can be replaced at any time.

That means we will probably have a leadership election very soon, which is pretty disastrous both for Labour and, potentially, for the immediate task of fighting back against the dangers of the extreme right. It will be awful: for weeks the PLP will resound to the screams of people attacking each other for being soft-brained Corbynistas or Tory-lite Blairites, demonstrating once again the grand convention that Labour people are far nastier to each other than to their political opponents.

There is a considerable danger of electing somebody who will be equally ineffective, or that we will only be presented with a list of the corporate/marketer types again, or both. Poisonous tabloids and their UKIP soulmates will have a field day, and the Conservatives – currently riven by arguments about which species of swivel-eyed dogmatic nastiness should prevail – will revel in the continuing absence of opposition.

So far, Jeremy is standing firm. His main allies are standing round him in an inner phalanx like Harold’s housecarls at the Battle of Hastings. For example, there is John McD., old-fashioned political heavy, brandishing his great sword; and there is Diane A., railing against the Blairite conspirators whom she has always seen lying in wait around every corner, seeming to imply that criticism of Jeremy could only ever come from them and hence can be ignored. Fortunately for Jeremy, his supporters have come up with one great idea – Corbyn buttons with your face on them. That will appeal particularly to voters in the key 11-14 age group.

A leadership election would be an awful thing to have to do at an awful time to have to do it, but there isn’t ever going to be a good time for this. Let’s hope to god that if there is to be change that somebody emerges who can lead the whole party against the gathering darkness.