To the toughest sales pitch in the nation’s history, enter Theresa May, its worst ever salesperson

If you’re struggling to understand just how far away 53 million light years really is, think of the black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy as the questions Theresa May was asked, and little old us, here on Earth, as her answers

Theresa May’s mission, in Brussels, was to use the full force of her personality to persuade the European Union to say yes to the thing they told her not to even bother asking for, and have already said no to twice.

It’s the kind of sales pitch that the Wolf of Wall Street would never even have attempted. So it was just as well the prime minister arrived with her wondrous interpersonal gifts fully intact, firing out her now trademark 10,000-yard death glare. When she made it to the TV news cameras, she inspected the entirely fair questions put to her by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg as if they were heavily soiled nappies.

It was getting on for two and a half hours by this point since humanity had seen the first ever recorded image of the single greatest natural wonder ever found in all of the universe, so naturally everyone was already extremely bored with Brexit/black hole jokes. But if you happen to be struggling to come to terms with just how far away 53 million light years really is, think of that dark nucleus at the centre of the M87 galaxy as the questions Theresa May was asked, and little old us, here on Earth, as her answers.

On background: Theresa May has asked the European Union for a short extension to the Article 50 process until 30 June. Twenty-seven different national leaders, and their 27 rather busy diaries, have had to be reconfigured so they can come to Brussels and give her an answer to this question, even though she asked it three weeks ago and they said no. And before she asked it three weeks ago, she was expressly told, by Jean-Claude Juncker, that the answer will be no.

“So what will she do, if they say no,” Laura Kuenssberg, and the rest of humanity, and indeed all sentient and semi-sentient life between here and the light-sucking centre of eternity, wanted to know.

“I’m working to ensure that we can leave the European Union within the timescale that the government is working to and that’s what I’m going to be working for,” came the answer. That’s verbatim. Then it was followed by the words, “thank you”, before she stomped inside the European Council headquarters, a nation’s future balanced upon the single hair’s breadth that is the full range of her emotional intelligence.

And, somewhat unfortunately for us, others who stopped to do the Brussels red carpet were more forthcoming. Michel Barnier made clear that any extension had to be “useful”. He knows as well as anyone that the UK will be making no use whatsoever of whatever we are given. There’s already a Tory leadership election planned for it, and quite possibly a general election.

What he and others want to see is the UK’s orderly withdrawal from the EU. Trouble is, there’s absolutely no one in the UK that wants that. An orderly withdrawal is what MPs have said no to three times. Half of them don’t want any withdrawal at all.

The other half want the orgiastic catastrophe of no deal that they never, ever promised, for reasons that only make sense when you remember that all Brexit has ever been about is a Tory leadership struggle, and the Tory party membership is straightforwardly psychotic.

A long extension is very much likely to yield unto them a British prime minister from the deranged wing of the Conservative Party, or Jeremy Corbyn, who has expanded the deranged wing of the Labour Party so as to take it over entirely. And if you think Theresa May and co have done an abysmal job negotiating Brexit, just wait till those legends have a go, the ones with their semi-customs union that isn’t a customs union but does give the UK a say over the actual customs union that they’re not even in. Bonne chance, mes amis.

Emmanuel Macron spoke of a “European renaissance” that Brexit is threatening to unravel. Indeed, at this point, it is helpful to think of the European Union as a pleasant European square, one that has recently been liberated of a large number of drunken sunburnt idiots throwing furniture around and singing songs about German bombers and the IRA. It appears to be the real danger, now, not that they are going to take their business elsewhere, but that, perish the thought, they might actually be coming back.