It is extraordinary that Theresa May wants to take her botched record to the betrayed British electorate in 2022

Who’d want to be British prime minister after the humiliation and the sharp recession that will arrive in 2019?

Theresa May says she will fight the 2022 election (Reuters)

With a certain hauteur that we are, unhappily, becoming used to, the European Union’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has delivered his verdict on the Brexit talks thus far. In three words (in translation) he tried to shake the British out of their complacency and to face up to the scale of the failure that is about to engulf them: “No decisive progress” on the key issues has been made. Cold words.

Everyone should understand the meaning of them, for without such progress on the agreed initial issues – the Irish border, the “divorce” bill and the rights of EU/UK citizens – then there can be no progress at all on the new trade deal that the British desire so badly.

Indeed, Mr Barnier twisted the diplomatic knife a little tighter when he told a press conference that the British were perversely “nostalgic” about the benefits of EU membership, rather than looking forward to their bracing global future.

It was a frosty sort of session, and not immediately encouraging for the “deep and special relationship” Theresa May once told her counterparts on the continent that she was seeking. A walkout by one side or other – partly theatrical, partly on substance – would not surprise anyone at this stage.

Little of the failure in the Brexit talks so far – and failure is not too strong a word where precisely nothing has been agreed more than a year after the referendum – can be blamed on the personalities involved.

David Davis is the best we’ve got, it seems, and his “creative ambiguity” and breezy approach to detail, though fooling no one, are not the real cause of the disharmony. Time and again in the talks, in the “position papers” of both sides, and in the vast coverage and analysis that fills the media, the same old problems keep cropping up.

The kind of access the UK used to enjoy to European markets cannot be secured without remaining a full member of the EU. Something like it cannot be secured without accepting migration of labour and a common external tariff (and thus no separate international trade deals). These are eternal verities, logical facts and not bargaining chips. The cake cannot be had and eaten.

The Irish border cannot be frictionless and operate as it does now, or as it did when both the UK and the Irish were outside the EU, when the Northern Irish frontier becomes the external border of the EU.

Either the British pay their financial obligations (undefined) or they do not, with consequences either way.

There are points in these arguments, then, that are simple matters of logic, and no amount of charm, cajoling, bullying or wishful thinking about technology and “creative solutions” can reconcile the irreconcilable. It is not a matter of haggling about fish quotas, as trade talks tend to be; it is more a process of trying to make sense out of nonsense.

The fact is that Mr Davis and Mr Barnier could be locked in the negotiating chamber until the end of time and they would still not have sorted out these insoluble conundrums. They’d have more chance of solving Fermat’s Last Theorem. Hence the mutual frustrations.

Thus, the British are still, stubbornly, sticking to the delusion that they can enjoy all of the “free trade” and economic comforts of EU membership whilst skipping the more onerous obligations, including financial ones, and the political commitment that goes with them. For as long as we do, nothing will get done.

The latest variation of this is the scramble to get some kind of “transition agreement” – a tacit admission of the economic damage that is already being done by the very prospect of Brexit. It will not move Mr Barnier. He has time on his side, and the better leverage in these talks. The British haven’t been in such a weak position since they failed to get into Europe on a strikingly similar proposal to the one they have now back in the 1960s. It did not work then, and it will not work now.

Even had the talks gone entirely to plan, this would still be a tight timetable. As things stand, there’s a better than evens chance that the UK will simply crash out of the EU in about 18 months, with “third country” status and a trade relationship no closer to the EU than anyone else in the world (though with the exception of states where EU economic sanctions have been imposed such as North Korea).

Britain would, in other words, be further from the heart of Europe, and its adjacent wallet, than Turkey, Ukraine, Canada or Japan, who actually will have trade deals with the bloc, let alone Norway or Switzerland, the semi-detached European states most often offered up as possible models for the future.

In that context, then, who’d want to be British prime minister after the humiliation and the sharp recession that will arrive in 2019? Who would want to go back to the British people and tell them Brexit will indeed mean they will be poorer, and suffer higher inflation, a devalued pound, higher unemployment, a housing slump and a mass exodus of jobs and skills (already under way).

Ms May, contrary to the impression that has been allowed to grow since the disastrous general election campaign, now declares she would like to take her record in office – not much more than a botched Brexit – to a badly deceived and betrayed electorate at the next general election. She must be quite the masochist to enjoy being laughed at so much.

A wipeout for the Tories beckons. Some might be forgiven for thinking that that is precisely what she and her party deserve.