The next 100 days will define Brexit – it will be our job to find clarity in the mess

At this very late stage the possibilities remain dizzying in their variety and have radically different implications

With 100 days to go until Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union – potentially the greatest peacetime challenge in the nation’s economic history – the only thing anyone can be certain about is that Brexit is a mess.

There is still too much uncertainty. With a painful irony, there is also at least one fact that is incontrovertible – that not knowing what the immediate future will bring is bad for business, jobs and livelihoods.

It is worth recalling exactly how far away we now are from what was once blithely predicted about the “easiest trade deal in history”. Not so long ago, in the days when David Davis was Brexit secretary and Theresa May laid out her defiant red lines, it seemed that Britain expected to have its cake and eat it, and Europe would smother it in cream for us.

This time last year, when the initial phase of the talks about the “divorce” was complete and “sufficient progress” had been made, it was confidently said that the future trade and security partnership between the UK and EU would also be ready for sign off. Hence the catchphrase that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. Well, we do now have a UK-EU withdrawal agreement, but the House of Commons stubbornly refuses to endorse it.

Even more glaringly, there is only a breezy “political declaration” sitting where a weighty, detailed trade treaty should be. This we know, and we also know that the future trade deal will remain undecided for many months, if not years to come. Ms May seems to think it an achievement that negotiations on the future trading relationship will begin as soon as the withdrawal agreement is ratified by the British and European parliaments. The one Brexit that we will be getting, then, is a blind Brexit.

It is a time for businesses, public services and families alike to make further contingency plans, as best they can, for any of the many eventualities that could transpire.

This will not be straightforward, because at this very late stage the possibilities are dizzying in their variety and their radically different implications: a second referendum, with the possibility of a renewed mandate to leave or a decision to stay in the EU; a no-deal Brexit; a “managed” no-deal Brexit; various soft Brexit models based on the Norwegian or Canadian examples; a general election; a minority or majority Labour government; a Labour-led rainbow coalition of the opposition parties; an “accidental” Brexit; a new Conservative prime minister... It is a flow chart with a seemingly endless array of routes and myriad destinations.

With so much still to decide, there is an ever-more urgent need for facts, analysis and interpretation, and this The Independent is determined to provide. For the next 100 days, for subscribers to Independent Minds and our Daily Edition, we will explore and explain precisely what is happening, what might soon happen, and what, so far as can be judged, the ramifications of different scenarios may turn out to be. This is not an exercise in “Project Fear”, and nor is it undertaken with any false guarantees for the future. It is merely to contribute to a better understanding of the issues and choices facing the nation (and the EU for that matter).

In normal circumstances the government and parliament would be able to chart a course, popular or not. Yet the cabinet is divided, the government as a whole has suffered numerous resignations, the prime minister is under siege from her own backbenchers, the DUP’s 10 MPs threaten the very stability of the country, and the House of Commons is having difficulty even working out how it is going to decide the European issue, let alone what it wants to do. There is, as has been apparent for some time, no majority for a no-deal Brexit – but that remains the only outcome that has been legislated for, via the Article 50 procedure in the EU and through an Act of Parliament. It is not impossible that, as the 100 days erode, the prime minister’s game of chicken with the Commons will result in some sort of crash, the accidental Brexit that is supposedly almost everybody’s worst nightmare.

Understanding where the country is headed, then, is more important than ever; and, in the event of a Final Say referendum it is essential for every citizen to be prepared to make an informed decision. There is so much more we know now than we did at the 2016 referendum, but there is plenty left still to learn.