Boris Johnson is excelling at building an airtight case against his own leadership

Not a good day, then, for the government, but a very good one for parliament – holding ministers to account, and taking control of its own destiny.

Politics is full of surprises. The fact that Boris Johnson’s spin doctors have had to confirm at such an early stage in his premiership that he is not going to resign is just one of them: it does feel like the wheels are coming off already, and he is yet to have his first personal scandal in office.

Having already lost his majority, his first vote in the Commons and sacked 21 of his own MPs (a guerrilla army who will now feel they have little left to lose), Mr Johnson also fell into the unfamiliar territory of being beaten up by the “Marxist” Jeremy Corbyn at prime minister’s questions, their first tussle. The leader of the House of Commons made a fool of himself by striking a languorous pose on the Treasury bench, as if posing for an Edwardian-era caricature by Leslie Ward (“Spy”), or, as it turned out, a torrent of memes on social media.

After Mr Johnson’s lacklustre performance in the house, in which he was humiliated by Sikh MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, Sajid Javid, Mr Johnson’s new chancellor, was twice upbraided by the speaker for straying from his subject during the spending review, and found himself suffering some magisterial put-downs from his shadow, the “Marxist” John McDonnell.

Mr Johnson’s misery was made complete when Mr McDonnell made an unkind wisecrack about the row the prime minister had had with his girlfriend a few weeks ago. More justifiably, Mr McDonnell poured scorn on the treatment of the chancellor’s media adviser, Sonia Khan, sacked without the chancellor’s knowledge by Dominic Cummings, and marched out of Downing Street by an armed police officer. To be fair to Mr Javid, it was not an episode anyone could justify. It certainly won’t be featuring in any HR handbooks as a paradigm of good management.

Indeed the malign influence of Mr Cummings seems to seep into every pore of the governments travails. It is not simply his arrogant and dismissive persona, his unnecessarily harsh demands or rough ways that are the problem, regrettable though these are. David Cameron famously called him a “career psychopath” and, as the public has grown to know more about him, the former prime minister’s description seems to have some accuracy to it.

Yet the real problem with Mr Cummings is that, despite his undoubted intelligence, his intellectual curiosity, and his formidable work ethic, he and the rest of the gang seem prone to tactical errors. So, yes, as Mr Cummings would not like to be reminded, he is being outsmarted by Dominic Grieve, Hilary Benn, Sir Oliver Letwin and other mere “politicians”.

The prorogation of parliament, for example, was supposed to mean that MPs would be less able to pass any awkward legislation about obstructing a no-deal Brexit. The effect, however, was quite different. Duly galvanised by the narrowing of the window, and wary of the government’s intentions, MPs took the earliest possible opportunity to put their legislation on the statute book. Attempts to filibuster the bill in the Lords, or to persuade Buckingham Palace to delay the royal assent will not succeed, and do not deserve to. A threat to create 100 Brexit-supporting peers is bizarre, and impractical, given how many days the Lords will be sitting (because of the prorogation) and how many can be made to perform the arcane rituals of the peerage in a working day.

Removing the whip from the Conservative rebels makes the party look more divided and extremist – and less electable. More to the point for ministers, it also means that men and women who have had their political careers summarily ended will be even more likely to go rogue on the back benches and, when the time comes, stand in their own right as independent Conservatives and split the vote in various constituencies. The sacking of MPs was a “ruthless” gesture that will prove badly counterproductive.

Much the same can be said for the refusal to publish the Yellowhammer dossier and other Brexit-related briefings. The absence of fact merely creates a vacuum into which fear flows, ironically enough.

Calling for an election, as Mr Johnson does so often, and being unable to then hold one is not a sign of a premier in charge of events. Promising to deliver Brexit by 31 October, “do or die”, and then failing to – now almost certain – will also make the electorate wonder what, exactly, Mr Johnson is for, what on earth has happened to the Conservative Party, and why livelihoods are being jeopardised by someone called Dominic Cummings. He is becoming the story, and not a particularly helpful one.