YOU know those films which are so full of explosions, gunfire and collapsing buildings that you stop paying any attention?

I’ve felt that way about politics in recent days, as events overwhelm our government that would once have seemed incredibly dramatic.

This government is the first in history to have been found to be in contempt of parliament.

Once, that would have been an electrifying moment, and we would have been speculating about who would lose their job first. But in the current atmosphere, the world just moved on to the next day’s drama.

Then, in the face of certain defeat on the biggest peacetime decision of our lives, the government called off a vote – despite the fact that a debate had already been running for days.

By the time the leader of the House of Commons appeared on the Today programme and suggested the speaker, John Bercow, was biased against the government, I had almost lost my capacity to be surprised.

Then came the confidence vote in Theresa May by her own MPs, which was over and done with in a day or so. It was a far cry from those days in 1990 when I used to time my commutes to listen to the developing news about Margaret Thatcher’s leadership.

Back then, the prospect that a figure who had dominated politics for so long might be ejected by her own party was astonishing. Yet the attempt to defenestrate Theresa May was just like another of those unsurprising moments in overwrought action films.

For me, the net effect of all this activity is just disorientating – because events have overturned a lot of the things that people have long held to be true about our public life.

For example: People have often criticised our political system for being antiquated, or for the fact that the number of MPs each party has can be wildly out of proportion with the number of votes that party received. The not unreasonable rejoinder used to be: Say what you like about our system, but at least it produces stable government.

Now that our government is looking about as stable as a conservatory built by Laurel and Hardy, we don’t hear that argument so much.

British politicians used to laugh at countries whose public life was as shambolic as this. It’s hardly surprising that a May 2015 tweet by David Cameron is mocked daily online now. It’s the one that said: “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice – stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.”

Here’s another piece of received wisdom that seems to have been overturned lately: Elections are won from the centre.

While Margaret Thatcher took the country further to the free market right than many thought possible, she did not propose withdrawing from the European Union. And the only major party manifesto that contained that pledge – Labour’s in 1983 – was comprehensively rejected. Now, of course, that idea has become government policy.

Labour is led from its left, while the Conservatives’ right wing has been in the ascendant. Meanwhile, Sir John Major and Tony Blair – two figures who, between them, governed from the centre-right and the centre-left for 17 years – have become voices in the wilderness.

As many have pointed out, this is not necessarily all about Britain. Across the world, there has been a reaction against mainstream politicians. The US rejected a presidential candidate who was, on paper, just about the most qualified person for the post since George HW Bush – and chose a loose-talking reality TV star instead.

In France, a centrist president has found himself having to make concessions to the gilets jaunes protesters, who have a bewildering list of contradictory demands that include lower taxes and more public spending – not to mention cheaper fossil fuels in a country whose capital gave its name to a historic agreement on climate change.

This strong strain of contempt among the public for mainstream politicians is behind a lot of the current chaos. All the possible routes out of the Brexit impasse – no-deal Brexit; the government’s withdrawal deal; a general election; a second referendum – will all be terribly divisive. At some point, the country is going to have to pick the least worst.

Maybe the UK can put all this anger behind us and learn to accommodate all points of view in a country run capably and moderately. But on top of all the unlikely things to happen recently, that is looking the unlikeliest.