This is what I call reality TV

Ever since we became addicted to streaming services, the compulsive binge-viewing of Netflix, Lightbox etc has kept us distracted from watching world events as they happen. And that’s a great shame because Westminster in the past few days has been pulsating high-end drama, and history in the making. You remember history, don’t you? It used to be a core subject taught in schools, now sidelined and thought to be pretty much irrelevant.

The sturm und drang of this part of the Brexit drama is happening in shocking unmissable instalments, and you really should tune in to see: if, and when, a snap election is going to happen; whether Britain crashes out of the European Union without a divorce deal; whether it can successfully seek yet another extension.

So no need for Brexit blase´ .

It’s been riveting seeing Bo-Jo (Boris Johnson) try and goad Big Girl’s Blouse (Jeremy Corbyn) into an election, and watch the prime minister’s reaction as 21 of his Conservative MPs deserted him and he punished them with deselection.

When Bo-Jo’s own bro, Jo, decided to stand down from Government, citing tensions between family loyalty and the national interests, the prime minister could’ve quoted his former Aussie counterpart Malcolm Turnbull’s anguished cry when he said of John Key’s resignation: ‘‘Say it ain’t so, bro’’. Or he could have employed an older, more famous quote and said to his younger sibling, ‘‘Et tu Brute’’.

The optics on Jo going are that, if his brother can’t trust the PM’s motives and stand by him, then why should the country? (And who knew, outside of Britain, that Boris had a brother in Parliament? And that he was as handsome as the ‘‘over-promoted bath toy’’ – Hugh Grant’s description of the PM – is grotesque.)

Don’t wait for all of this to be made into an edited and abbreviated documentary like Brexit: The Uncivil War, that TV movie which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings, the mastermind of the Vote Leave campaign.

We have seen little physical evidence of the Svengali Cummings in this drama, but know that the PM’s chief adviser is responsible for shapeshifting the Tories into a far-Right party as it tears itself apart. We have become so used to watching history turned into watchable bite-sized docudramas, when we should be watching this epic drama shift from interminable Groundhog Day into the fast-moving time-frame of the exciting now.

What was once a watched plot that never boils is now all action stations, after the new PM plotted the ‘‘prorogation’’ of parliament (that word that sounds like an out-of-control pogo stick).

Giving parliament less time to thrash out Brexit has galvanised opposition parties, and internal party opposition to Boris, bringing them together as some sacrifice careers for their country.

We don’t need any streaming service to shove all this through the sieve of the dream machine to make it real. Democracy deserves more than that kind of after-the-event, laidback, armchairspectator sport.

It needs our engagement, not a shrug of the shoulders to say ‘‘It’s all fake news’’, when we can see the real lie of a prime minister trying to call Europe’s bluff, vowing there has been movement on negotiations with Brussels, when the EU says there has been nothing but paralysis.

Pity the British electorate trying to work out what the Conservative Party stands for in the next election. At least some Conservative MPs have had the decency to examine their consciences and act accordingly, unlike their American Republican counterparts.