Disastrous May has botched it every step of the way

And there you have it. After almost two years of negotiations with the European Union, the deal the Prime Minister and her team of officials carefully constructed has gone down to the worst parliamentary defeat on a major policy since at least the 1920s.

Ahead of the vote there had been much speculation at Westminster that the defeat of the Withdrawal Agreement would turn out to be not quite as heavy as feared by the government.

When it came to it, and the tellers returned, the numbers were catastrophic for the Prime Minister. The government mustered only 202 votes in the end. It lost by 230. As the numbers were announced they were so stark that MPs uttered a primal collective noise that was part howl and part intake of breath.

A vote of confidence will be held on Wednesday. May should win that – with the backing of Tory hard-line Remainers not yet (it is assumed) ready to break with the Tory party and the government. That could come later, in only weeks, if they fail to kill off no deal and need another way to bring the house down. The DUP is also prepared – this time – to line up with May.

If she wins the vote, the problem will still be the same on Thursday and Friday. The Commons hates her deal. The EU won’t offer any major changes, it seems. If there is a majority for anything – adding in a customs union and or EEA into the political declaration – then it lies across various parties and lacks a potential prime minister who can give it voice, or get to be prime minister in the first place.

In such dire circumstances it is tempting, at times, to feel a surge of simple human sympathy for May. She has remained at her post when weaker individuals would have had to be retired under medical supervision. But she sought and coveted the job. No-one compelled her to take it.

She has since made a calamitous mess of the entire process, from start to finish, trying initially from the summer of 2016 to prove her non-existent Brexit credentials under pressure from her joint chiefs of staff. They overdid it, rather than reaching out to Remainers.

After botching the election in 2017 she surrendered, against advice, on the key question of the sequencing of the talks, letting the EU dictate the running order, with all the focus on the withdrawal terms and too little on the future relationship. Deprived of a majority she failed to forge a compromise and instead dodged her cabinet. Rather than making tough choices and trying to take opinion with her she stuck to daft mantras.

This is May’s defeat. Lamentable strategy, poor advice, dud decision upon dud decision led to this point. There are little more than 70 days until Britain is due to leave the EU and neither the government nor MPs have a plan.