Theresa May's fight for survival is now measured in hours not days

There can be no mandate for a Brexit that has descended to this level of chaos

With no small amount of regret, I must ask you to consider this column in the format of David Attenborough documentary, except that the “making of” bit at the end will have to last for at least fifty minutes of the full hour.

It is now coming towards the end of, even by current standards, one of the maddest days in British politics, and there remains no cogent point that can be made about it. The only way to shed any light on events is to attempt to describe the impossibility of the light shedding process.

Since Sunday night, it has remained hinted at but nevertheless entirely unknown whether Theresa May will cancel her “meaningful vote” on Tuesday, or amend it some way as to make it meaningless. If she does do that, it may well be that the subsequent meaningful votes, on Wednesday and Thursday, which are meant to involve a) resolving to, as they say “takehttps://www.independent.co.uk/topic/no-deal-brexit no-deal off the table” and b) extending the Article 50 process, do not proceed as planned either.

But no one knows if it is going to happen. Theresa May’s spokespeople were asked for guidance on the subject at regular intervals throughout the day. No such guidance came. The Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay was meant to be appearing before a Select Committee at 12.15pm, to update on “progress” negotiating the Withdrawal Agreement. The appearance was cancelled.

Jeremy Corbyn tabled an urgent question in the House of Commons, to ask the Prime Minister to come and say what on earth was going on. Theresa May did not appear. She was too busy, over the road at Westminster Abbey doing a bible reading to an audience of Meghan Markle and others for National Commonwealth Day. Not even Stephen Barclay could find his way to the despatch box to answer it.

If Tuesday’s vote is to be amended by the government, that amendment will have to make itself known in public at some point on Monday night. In the House of Commons, MPs wanted to know whether or not to expect it before 10pm, when the commons rises for the night, whether it might appear on the House of Commons website in the small hours of the morning, or indeed, just to be given any clue at all about what was going on at this impossibly serious times.

Answers came there none.

If the vote is to be amended, and parliament is not given “a meaningful vote by 12 March at the latest,” as Theresa May said it would be two weeks ago, she would, in Yvette Cooper’s opinion, have told a “straight up lie.” Such things could lead to another vote of no confidence in her. What would happen this time round? Would her party bring her down? A new government would have to be formed within two weeks. Brexit is meant to be happening in less than three. Again, nobody knows.

All weekend, the media were kept very well briefed of the fact that talks between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker had reached a complete impasse. That there was no way around the backstop problem. At 5pm, Theresa May decided she would go to Strasbourg to have “further talks” with Jean-Claude Juncker, but made clear that no one should expect them to amount to anything, beyond an arrival photograph at 9pm.

No one knows anything. And we are at the point where no one knowing anything is not because they haven’t been told, but because there is nothing to know. The House of Commons isn’t going to vote for Theresa May’s deal. The EU isn’t going to give Theresa May the concessions she says she requires to get the House of Commons to change its mind. There is precious little evidence such concessions even exist.

It might seem obvious to point out, but the European Union is a union, and it is standing by its member, Ireland, who will not countenance the removal of the backstop, and not its non-member, the United Kingdom.

And that’s it. Where it leads, nobody knows. No-deal? No Brexit? A delay? A long one? A short one? We are now at the stage where the bacon on Britain’s supermarket shelves has a longer shelf life than Britain’s membership of the European Union, and nobody has any idea what is going to happen.

It is now almost three years since the country voted to leave the European Union. That is more than half of a parliamentary term. Electorates can and regularly do change their minds in such a period of time. Democracy itself is contingent on it.

So it is not illegitimate to ask whether, on 23 June 2016, the people of the United Kingdom really did issue a mandate for where we now find ourselves. Which is in a situation of total chaos, and ungovernable country trying to take the most important and most perilous step it has taken in decades. It is completely unfit to do so.

In 2016, the British people did only one thing, which was to advise parliament that it wished to leave the European Union. It expressed no view at all on the best way of doing so, and there are many options. For three years parliament has, in its way, functioned entirely normally, and it has found itself entirely incapable of finding a way in which to deliver on the advice it was given. There is virtually no more time left.

Brexiteers and their media cheerleaders are going to great lengths to point out that the country is shifting in favour of a “no-deal Brexit.” Their justification for this is various polls in which support for such an outcome has risen to more than a third. But if you wish to alight upon that particular statistic, it is impossible to do so without also considering every single poll, be they right or wrong, which are now unambiguous that the country is in favour of remain.

There are no good options. Something outrageous is going to happen. Even a second referendum would make little difference. Three years of mad government have not brought the country any closer to a place where a referendum could be held to offer a clear instruction on how to leave the European Union. There is still nothing agreed. The trade negotiations have not started.

All we can do is write down the process. The votes, the amendments, the next steps, how x might happen. There is still no Great White Shark shooting out of the ocean. There is no mother penguin returning after the long winter with fish to regurgitate. There is still nothing.

In such a situation, it is entirely legitimate to consider whether, having tried this hard for this long, just revoking Article 50 altogether might be the least insane thing to do.