However many balls Theresa May professes are in the EU's court, it's really only their opinion on the score that matters

We have long since realised, or should have, that the balance of power in this relationship sits firmly across the English Channel

The Government has released new figures on racial discrimination (AFP/Getty Images)

It is a strange game of tennis indeed where the players cannot even agree on where the ball is, let alone the rules of the game. Before Theresa May had even formally told the House of Commons that the Brexit ball (a peculiarly bouncy and unpredictable projectile, as we have learnt) was in the European Union’s court, the EU hit back, declaring the ball to be firmly in the British half of the court. Love all, it definitely is. With no umpire and with the Foreign Secretary having already sabotaged the Prime Minister’s racquet, it is a messy old match.

As always, the only opinion that really matters in all of this is that of the European Union, principally the European Commission but also the European Parliament and European Council, being the presidents, chancellors and prime ministers of the 27 remaining members of the club.

Unfortunately for Britain, it is in their gift to agree or withhold a deal – we have long since realised, or should have, that the balance of power in this relationship sits firmly across the English Channel. It may be that Michel Barnier is, as the British press would have it, an absurd “popinjay”, that Jean-Claude Juncker is some sort of obsessive Anglophobe, that the Europeans are trying to punish Britain, that they are being unreasonable because they have some sort of federalist agenda, and that they forgotten about what Britain did during the Second World War. Even if all that were true, it wouldn’t add anything to the UK’s bargaining power, and there is nothing the UK can do about it – and we know it. In her Lancaster House speech earlier this year, Ms May herself recognised the prospect of “no deal”, and many in her own party are now openly advocating such an eventuality – with no transition or implementation period.

What hope, then, for a breakthrough? In a sure sign of desperation, and a sinister one, the Prime Minister resurrected the veiled threat in the original Brexit white paper, dropped for a time, that the UK’s security relationship with the EU is now being linked again to the economic settlement, post-Brexit. The British Government is thus trading its security and armed forces, in effect, for a more advantageous trade deal.

This is unwise, even if it might be helpful in the negotiations: what would be entirely futile would be to withdraw from our implied and formal obligations to friends and allies on defence and terrorism simply because of a row about EEU budget contributions. If that is the price of a “breakthrough”, then it is not a price worth paying.

Likewise, the position of EU citizens in the UK should never have become a bargaining chip, because the contribution they make to the UK economy, businesses and public services is an absolute gain for the nation, but a bargaining chip is exactly what they are becoming – another lamentable and especially cruel consequence of Brexit.

Another is the chaos, or worse, that would befall the island of Ireland if the UK and EU had to trade on World Trade Organisation terms, and the EU does need the UK to pay off its dues and honour its international financial obligations. If the EU27 calculate they have more to lose than gain through failing to reach a deal, because of these alarming consequences, then they may well decide to press on with the second phase before there has, in truth, been the “sufficient progress” that the EU bargaining remit dictates.

Even so, there can be no certainty that the second set of talks will necessarily deliver a deal that is in the UK’s interests; indeed the chances that there will be what Ms May calls a “new, deep, special partnership” remain vanishingly small. The basic fact bears repeating: there is no possible trade deal that could be better than the one the UK presently enjoys inside the single market, the European customs union and its assorted structures, overlapping with Nato, yet outside the troubled eurozone.

One growing problem for the Prime Minister, and the British negotiators, is her astonishingly weak position, one that cannot be talked up by her friends’ faith in her “resilience”. It stems, as does so much else, from her disastrous decision to hold that early general election, lose her mandate and lose her authority – the “revenge of the Remoaners” in June that almost put Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. It was, after all, supposed to be a personal vote of confidence in her and one that would strengthen her hand in Brussels. That is not exactly how it panned out.

While Ms May now takes every opportunity to declare her willingness to carry on until the next election, few believe it. No one can quite be sure what Boris Johnson’s intentions are, or who precisely those poisonous-tongued “friends” who profess to speak to him really are either. No matter; there is sufficient speculation around whether he will be demoted, quit, be sacked or just continue to wound and harass his nominal political boss that the EU can be forgiven for thinking – maybe hoping – they’ll be speaking to a Labour government soon. In that eventuality, they may think a fresh referendum on the putative terms of Brexit would be a possibility.

Support for the idea of a second referendum is also the position of the Liberal Democrats and, near enough, the Greens and SNP, whose conferences find themselves overshadowed by another instalment of the Johnson-May psychodrama, a sort of political Doctor Foster. There is a growing consensus for a fresh national Brexit vote.

Brexit, then, is no orderly game of tennis, even a bad-tempered one. It is already chaos, thanks to irreconcilable differences within and between the political parties and indeed the Cabinet, reflecting those across the country as a whole.

The better metaphor remains that involving bakery: the British, as for so long past, want to have their cake and eat it, while the Europeans are not prepared to agree to that. Nothing the Prime Minster has said, in the Commons today, in Florence lately or at Lancaster House before the election, has changed that, but merely restated the problem. No surprise, then, that much of her quarter-hour statement in fact consisted of reading out chunks of her old speeches.

A fresh referendum on the terms of Brexit might not resolve these matters, but there are no clearer ways to enable this nation, so divided, to resolve its differences.