Theresa May has taken back control of Brexit – trouble is, she still has no idea what to do with it

There is no spice worth adding to the events themselves. No salt can augment the terrifying umami of such base inadequacy

What to say, at the end of another “historic” day in the Greatest S***show on Earth? We reach again into the “it’s like...” cupboard but this time it’s completely bare. There are no more bald men and no combs to come to our service. There are no boulders and no hills. There are no deckchairs, no Titanic, no piss-ups and no breweries. There are no turds and no polish. Even the glitter has all run out.

There is now only the thing itself, reaching beyond all similitude.Brexit: The Eternal Crapness. The Unsurpassable Embarrassment.

There is no spice worth adding to the events themselves. No salt can augment the terrifying umami of such base inadequacy.

So here’s what happened. The House of Commons voted to rule out “no deal.” But it also voted against both the practical solutions put on the table to make it happen.

It voted to send Theresa May back to Brussels to re-open negotiations on the withdrawal agreement. At the precise moment it did so, the European Commission released a statement saying it cannot be re-opened.

Theresa May was victorious, in her own way. But she was victorious in the defeat of her own deal.

A small bit of background might be useful. In November, after two years of boldly claiming “no deal is better than a bad deal”, Theresa May finally achieved a deal, which everyone instantly agreed was bad. Theresa May, on several occasions, has agreed it is bad.

At that point, she stood outside 10 Downing Street and said that, actually, it turns out, a bad deal was better than no deal. And, more to the point, that this was “the only deal”. Over the last two months, she has stood at the despatch box of the House of Commons and declared that her deal is “the only deal”, that it “cannot be renegotiated” upwards of a hundred times, spread over more than twenty hours.

She has said it is “the only deal”, and that it “cannot be renegotiated”, because the European Union have said the same themselves, with the same regularity, and the same consistency.

Now, she has decided it can be renegotiated after all, which it can’t.

Various hard Brexiteers, the DUP, the ERG, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, have consistently demanded she go back to Brussels and demand the impossible. To reopen the negotiations, and, in their words, “bin the backstop”.

She has, consistently, said no. Because saying “no” to the impossible is the only sensible thing to do.

Until today that is, when the last vestige of sensible took wings and flew away. The only way, she decided, to get Brexit through the House of Commons is to tell them the impossible was possible. So she stood at the despatch box and promised a “significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement”. Cheers were heard. “It will involve reopening the withdrawal agreement.”

“There is limited appetite for renegotiation in Brussels,” she said. Within a minute of these words exiting her lips, the European Commission’s statement reduced that “limited” down to zero.

On she went, into the realm of fantasy. The only way off the sinking ship, she had now reluctantly accepted, was to cede to what had been demanded of her all along. She would now, though she had limited appetite to do it, grow wings and fly.

She governs only with a mandate to achieve the impossible. And the alternative to the impossible is “no deal”.

They all know this. But by telling her to go back to Brussels, and Brussels saying no, they imagine they can shift the blame on to them.

Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, emerges from today’s events with hands still clean from blame – his only objective. He, too, put his unicorn version of Brexit to the house in the form of an amendment. The house, unsurprisingly, said no.

So off Theresa May goes then, to exactly where, no one knows. To Brussels in theory. But Brussels has already said there will be “no new summit”, and its negotiators have “no new mandate” from the 27 EU nations to reopen talks.

In the meantime, Theresa May has a victory of sorts to enjoy. She has taken taken back control of Brexit, at least for the time being. Trouble is, she’s still got no idea what to do with it. Brexit doesn’t mean Brexit. No deal isn’t better than a bad deal. Her deal isn’t the only deal. By the time all this is over, she’ll have never been prime minister, and who will be able to say with any certainty if her name was even Theresa May?