Just about everyone knows what Theresa May’s first choice outcome is this week – that squabbling MPs finally knuckle under, spooked at last by the threat of a snap election, and vote for her Brexit deal at the fourth time of asking.
What even her cabinet struggles to guess, is what her second choice would be; and which outcomes she could bring herself to preside over.
That could matter enormously in what even usually phlegmatic Downing Street aides concede is a crunch week.
If parliament signals its approval of a softer form of Brexit in another set of late-night votes on Monday, backbenchers overseeing the process, led by former Tory minister Oliver Letwin, say they will seek to use the majority they can muster in the Commons, to pass legislation binding the government’s hands.
But that raises profound political and constitutional questions – which the prime minister will ultimately have to decide how to answer.
She could simply accept the verdict of parliament, and implement it herself, as government policy; but that seems unlikely, given that her government tried to stop the Letwin process happening at all last week by whipping against the business motion kicking it off.
That would also put May in conflict with a significant group of cabinet ministers, including Andrea Leadsom and Liam Fox, who would prefer the government to opt for a no-deal Brexit, rather than allow parliament to drag it into a customs union.
Leadsom has repeatedly stressed the importance of abiding by the Tories’ 2017 general election manifesto, which ruled out customs union membership (though it also included a battery of other policies hastily ditched when the party’s majority was wiped out).
Pursuing a customs union – and perhaps single market membership – would also raise profound questions about the future of the Tory party, which is deeply split, with most support for the policy coming from Labour MPs.
May could allow herself to be dragged in a softer direction by parliament, as she effectively did with extending the article 50 deadline, accepting the policy but never truly owning it.
The government only held a vote on extending article 50 because the “Gaukward squad” of remainer cabinet ministers (with the backing of scores of more junior frontbenchers) demanded it. Even as the prime minister went to Brussels to ask for an extension, she made clear how much she regretted having to do so.
Allowing parliament to take the lead on such a central issue – the overriding focus of government policy, and the key question facing the nation – would mean the May administration could barely claim to be in power at all.
If instead she went to Brussels on 10 April to say Britain now wants to leave the EU without a deal, however, she would lose a string of ministers – some of whom might even be ready to side with Labour in a motion of no confidence, rather than be part of a government that deliberately pursued no-deal Brexit.
And it is this all-but-impossible choice – with threatened resignations on either side – that explains why May told MPs last week: “I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this house.” It is also why some colleagues believe she would rather call a snap general election than agree to implement a form of Brexit she believes voters don’t want.
Friends and longtime observers of the famously inscrutable May say that one of the only driving motivations they can discern is that of holding together her beloved Conservative party.
That helps to explain why, in the face of extraordinary odds, she has relentlessly pursued a Tory-plus-DUP solution to the conundrum of finding a Brexit majority.
Even after her deal was rejected with a record majority, she continued hammering away at plan A, rather than pivot towards a softer deal that might perhaps have carried with Labour support, but at the expense of splitting her party.
Yet while May’s tireless efforts may have been aimed at protecting the Conservative party, they have produced a relentless two-and-a-half-year-long carnival of hubris, division and disloyalty, which seem unlikely to have endeared them to the electorate. And which will only intensify whenever the leadership race formally gets underway.
Delivering Brexit has been May’s other guiding light during her time in Downing Street. But the stubborn single-mindedness that is her political superpower – propelling her to bring the same deal back to parliament for a third, and quite possibly a fourth time – has at times made leaving the EU appear an all-but-impossible feat.
Within days, it will be clear whether May’s extraordinary resilience has finally paid off – and if not, what on earth she will do, when she finally has to accept that plan A is dead.
