LABOUR’S deputy leader, Tom Watson, is up in arms over the media again. Never fear, Mr Murdoch: this time it is about the glaring shortage of women journalists at Westminster.

Citing a Women in Journalism report showing half the population remains massively under-represented when it comes to the reporting of politics, the UK shadow culture secretary called the situation “woeful” and demanded the lobby be 50:50 by the end of this Parliament.

He is right, even if it does take the chocolate Hobnob for a Labour politician to be asking for parity when his party has never elected a woman as its leader. His outrage is nevertheless appreciated, and we await someone in Scottish politics to make the same point about Holyrood, where the number of women political reporters makes a certain enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo look crowded.

Would more women reporting politics make a difference? One would like to think so, if only to increase the number of observers willing to draw attention to the whiff of the farmyard when they smell it. Apologies for the imagery. One foot in the door and already the monstrous regiment is lowering the tone. But how else can one sum up the recent goings on and noises off in the Conservative Party over Europe without thinking of the business end of a male bovine?

Let us try to sum up where we are now. Boris Johnson: The Foreign Secretary is in, he is out, he is waving his 4,200-word article on Brexit all about. He will not countenance paying for access to the single market, then he might. He raises the prospect of resignation, then he compares the Cabinet to a “nest of singing birds” sharing a single hymn sheet.

As for the Prime Minister’s speech in Florence tomorrow, being billed as a key moment on the road to Brexit, she might as well have written it on the wind as a piece of A4, so relentless has the lobbying been from within her own ranks.

The latest reading of the runes suggests she has cobbled together a position whereby the UK will pony up for access to the single market during a transition period of a couple of years, but after that not a penny more. There will be no Switzerland-style deal. If there is, it has been hinted, the Foreign Secretary will resign to spend more time with his growing family of leadership plotters.

How tiresome it all is. How childish. More to the point, how long will one party’s sheer dysfunction on Europe be allowed to dominate politics in the UK in this way?

No wonder Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, looks on Mr Johnson’s handiwork and despairs. His becoming prime minister would be every birthday and Christmas at once for the SNP. On the wider UK stage he is regarded as either catnip or cat litter, depending on whom is asked and when.

Indeed, if not for his well-documented lineage, one might almost believe the Foreign Secretary and his supporters had been cooked up in the lab of a hostile power to generate disruption and resentment. Boris is the exploding cigar of British politics, the big balloon that went up and stayed up. Perhaps one reason why the Russians have never tried to do with recent British elections what they attempted to do in America is that, with the likes of Mr Johnson around, they barely need to. What better way to ensure disenchantment than to leave voters with a government that seems more interested in scrapping amongst itself than fighting the country’s corner?

But here we go again, forgetting our manners. Mr Johnson claims his only reason for intervening so spectacularly is to protect and advance Britain’s interests, calling up the ghost of Winston Churchill and the kings and queens of the past to bolster his arguments and add lustre to his motives.

We will put aside, for a moment, the fact that his party conference is looming, that his star has been falling as briefings about his competence as Foreign Secretary have multiplied, and that he has form as a serial headline grabber, a “mater, look at me” merchant.

But if he has such a clear and principled vision for Brexit, why did he withdraw from the race to become party leader and prime minister after the EU referendum? Why take fright after a hard stare from the likes of Michael Gove? Why not fight the doubters on the beaches instead of raising the white flag at the St Ermine hotel? Looking back at coverage of that time it is striking how many commentators (and yes, most were male) predicted that Mr Johnson’s actions then would spell the end of his political career. Chins were stroked and pronouncements made: he cannot come back from this, oh dear no. Yet here we are again. The dysfunctional behaviour of Mr Johnson and his party was fed then just as it is being fed now.

That dysfunction starts at the top, with a prime minister so fatally weakened by her disastrous decision to call an early election that she gives every impression of not knowing if it is New York and the UN or New Year.

More than a year on from the EU referendum, she and her party are no further on in formulating and communicating a coherent exit from Europe. If this was a reality television show the Tory team would have been fired by now. Alas, it is merely reality as we have come to be served it.

Worse, matters look set to carry on this way. Even if Mr Johnson stays beyond this weekend we will not have heard the last of his rumblings of discontent. If he gets what he demanded he will be back for more. The already complex, delicate process of Brexit will be carried out in the shadow of Boris and his supporters swinging a wrecking ball, and a weakened prime minister will become more feeble by the day.

It would be infinitely easier to take Mr Johnson seriously if he had the courage to stand by his vision for Brexit and walk out of the Cabinet. Let the cards fall then as they may.

What follows may not be pretty, but at least politics at Westminster would stand a chance of becoming an honest endeavour again and not the crummy shambles we see before us.