May's handling of Brexit is a personal humbling and a national humiliation

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  Five Brexit facts you need to know today Morning, After a brief stop in this country for PMQs Theresa May heads to Brussels this afternoon to receive further directions on Brexit. The EU will instruct her on the length and terms of any extension and she will be obliged to accept those conditions in full. Such is the UK’s weakness that even Greece has expressed concern about the impact of granting a lengthy extension to such an unstable and unpredictable country. Donald Tusk has signalled the  Prime Minister is unlikely to get her request for a short extension to June 30  as the EU is minded to push for a year’s grace.  Even a delay to March 2020 is not a certainty given the level of mistrust in the EU about Britain’s ability to resolve Brexit and their fear of what will happen should a Brexiteer takeover as PM. My colleague Pippa Crerar reported last night that Tusk’s team called Labour aides to suggest that Corbyn ring socialist EU leaders to help get extension over the line. Mrs May will make her case to the 27 EU leaders before they withdraw to make their decision. Regular watchers of politics may have noticed the Prime Minister is not noted for her powers of persuasion. She also knows that she will have to return to the Commons on Thursday to explain the capitulation  to an increasingly furious Conservative Party.   This is, of course, a far cry from the future promised by the Brexiteers who still cling to the fantasy that if only they had been in charge of the negotiations the outcome would have been a glorious triumph. Rather than take responsibility for inflicting on the country a policy which has left us economically weaker, more divided and internationally humiliated they prefer to peddle the narrative of betrayal. This would have been the case regardless of how Brexit unfolded.  The fault would not have been their misguided dream but that of the UK government which failed to turn a fantasy into a reality, the EU which refused to accommodate the demands of someone who had torn up their membership or British workers and business for not being sufficiently enterprising. (Brexit champions Dominic Raab and Priti Patel were co-authors of a pamphlet which claimed the “British are among the worst idlers in the world.”) The EU referendum could be seen as the high water mark for the Brexiteer cause.  It was certainly the last time they displayed any political skill.  Since then they have fled from the scene of the crime (David Davis, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Steve Baker, Suella Braverman etc have all left Government), failed to present a cogent or workable form of Brexit, though that is primarily because one does not exist, and then voted down the only offer which came close to delivering on the referendum result. This incompetence also saw them blow their chance of getting rid of Mrs May by calling a no confidence vote without ensuring they had the necessary numbers. In the process they have sown the

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