Isn’t it usually more fun than this when we get a new Prime Minister? Limousines swishing their way to the Palace; followed by the discreet killing of careers among heavy curtains, plush furnishings, and untouched piles of corgi shit. Then the swiftness with which we forget the predecessors once that someone new gives us a wave and disappears through the big, black door.

With a new prime minister there was hope. Change was in the air. Something – anything – might happen. I know such handovers can’t all be sunny May mornings, which feel like the end of a nation’s long nightmare. But even the forced-smile, superficial handover from Blair to Brown implied we could lose some of the worst excesses of New Labour. Indeed, it was then that the Labour Party stopped launching never-ending wars in the Middle East, in favour of starting one with itself.

I’d call it a “continuity” Cabinet, but that’s one vowel away from what it really is

This time the changeover feels like it’s been snuck in under cover of a period of national mourning. A time when normal emotional responses were suspended, in honour of those grieving for the loss of – as I understand it – Paddington Bear. As a side note, I hope this becomes a tradition with monarchs and we see Charles trying to curry favour with the public by hanging out with Count Duckula, and William doing active service with Paw Patrol.

The reshuffle wasn’t finished before the whole country was plunged into a fortnight-long festival of deference. We didn’t get to watch the faces traipse in and out of Downing Street, trying to work out if they were disappointed or elated – or who they actually were. No one had to Google: “Who is Jake Berry?” We just bowed our heads and accepted the new government at this difficult time. To make a fuss about it would have been unseemly.

But if you hoped the new regime would herald a move away from the procession of substandard goblins Johnson chose to surround himself with, you’d be sorely disappointed. This is a Cabinet so full of horrors that Doctor Caligari would blanch, slam the door shut, and hastily offer it to Doctor Shipman. I’d call it a “continuity” Cabinet, but that’s one vowel away from what it really is.

You might have thought that shadow-dwelling oddities like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Suella Braverman would be first out the door of any prime minister who was keen on winning an election. However, their ability to say stupid things with a straight face means they’ve both been promoted rather than banished back to the cursed wells they crawled from. Grotty femunculus Thérèse Coffey was also a big winner, as your new deputy PM and health secretary. She showed her commitment to sorting out the parlous situation of the NHS by making her first edict one that banned the use of the Oxford comma. Which will come as a relief to anyone waiting for an operation on a perforated colon.

Some of us hoped for a respite from the torrent of horrible decisions that made up the Johnson administration – like living with a runaway muck-spreader that regularly smashed through convent walls and covered everyone inside with liquid effluent. Instead we got a one-man, slap-in-the-face for nominative determinism, James Cleverley as foreign secretary. You might remember Michelle Donelan from her previous ministerial outing as Boris Johnson’s education secretary for less than 36 hours before she resigned. One wishes her similar success in her current position: Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (note the comma, Thérèse Coffey!).

Johnson’s fellow Old-Etonian Kwasi Kwarteng, our new chancellor, soon put paid to any aspiration for a quiet, fair life for the country, with a mini-budget that pleased no one. Well, no one except the likes of Odey Asset Management, for whom Kwarteng was, in the past, a paid consultant. They’ve made strong gains by shorting the pound since the afternoon of the Chancellor’s statement. Sometimes it pays to be a hedge fund manager with a hunch. A Kwasimodo.

It turns out that ten days of looking at a golden hat instead of actual telly can make the whole country supine. A week that left no cap un-doffed ensured no one was going to riot when they heard the government was shovelling £50,000 each to millionaires. We are a whipped cur of a country, habituated to respond to any abuse with a weak smile and a “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” Well yes, you may. There’s an inexhaustible supply of terrible humans churned out by schools designed to provide it.

Our first glimpse of the new king suggested that he’s mired in the mentality that haunts our public sphere. A man who’s had every privilege and comfort in life with the entire world rearranged to please him can be driven mad by small irritations like a non-functioning pen. He appears to believe himself the victim of a huge conspiracy, as if there’s a cabal of rogue stationers providing him with malfunctioning biros “every stinking time!” This makes Charles III the perfect monarch for Brexit Britain. Every failure is someone else’s fault. Every accident is a slight. And having got everything they wanted, they still feel like victims.

There was a jarring moment on the day of the Queen’s death. A crowd of baffled-looking people gathered outside Buckingham Palace and sang “God Save The King”, a song most of us had never heard before. The system was designed to be seamless: there was never a second at which we were without a monarch.

Then we turned around and noticed that a government had slipped in, unnoticed. Again. And as always in Britain, there was never a moment when the arseholes weren’t in charge. Johnson is dead. Long live Johnson.

Nathaniel Tapley is a comedy writer and performer on the TV shows you hate