Theresa May sought common ground as it slipped away beneath her

The saboteurs were all meant to have been crushed by now, and yet they aren’t. It might even be intimated it is they who are crushing her

Theresa May’s last stand took place in the glass atrium of an accountancy company. Her small audience towered above her, spread over several floors.

It meant that she spoke with her neck inclined at an impossibly high angle, glancing up at the distant daylight, like a young Bane, stuck in The Pit prison, dreaming a hopeless dream of a life beyond.

There can be no true despair without hope. Whether Theresa May has given up on hope cannot be known. No actual, real, human emotion has ever escaped her. Not even a pheromone of one. But it must, alas, be reported that on a technical level, she has not given up on her withdrawal bill.

That will have one last push. And this speech was its midwife. “Seeking common ground in parliament,” was its tagline, stencilled on a white backdrop above her head. This isn’t how it was meant to be. The saboteurs were all meant to have been crushed by now, and yet they are uncrushed. It might even be intimated it is they who are crushing her.

It’s best to think of the withdrawal bill as it now exists, as a kind of Trigger’s broom that’s been rammed up a particularly mutant scarecrow. The same bill, but it’s had 14 new amendments, 18 new clauses, 20 new promises, and a commitment to exploring solutions for the frictionless movement of partridges in pear trees.

This was the Theresa May version of Oprah Winfrey’s great car giveaway. You want a commitment to matching EU environmental protections and more? You got it! You want a commitment to exploring technical customs solutions at the Irish border? You got it! Stormont lock? You got it! You want a second referendum? You got it! (Well, you’ve got a vote on whether to have a second referendum, and you’ve already had one, and you voted no, but anyway, you got it!)

Trouble is, though, routes out of the Brexit mess are not like cars. Not everyone can just jump in the one they like, drive it out the car park and into the sunset.

Mainly, what people want, is to make sure their opponent doesn’t get what he wants. Actual, workable solutions are as vanishingly non-existent as they have always been.

The prime minister had scarcely finished speaking by the time Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the new withdrawal bill was “worse” than the deal had been before. WTO terms is now the only way.

A softish Brexiteer by the name of Andrew Percy, who has voted for Theresa May’s deal three times now, said he won’t be voting for it any more.

That’s it then. The end. Seeking common ground, the ground slipped away beneath her.