icy days ahead?

Well, that went well. The third attempt to push Plan A attempted by Mrs May and immediately kicked back by the European Union.

The hypocrisy and skewed voting that left the process intact with no immediate ability to extend or stop Article 50 is foolish. The European Union negotiators can just hold their line now until the last minute. Mrs May has been painted into a corner.

The Throw Britain Under a Bus Manoeuvre is still holding as a basis for creating a faux Tory unity, although the Tory party are already showing signs of new fracture. The new target is Mrs May’s civil service lead negotiator, Olly Robbins, who has been constant through the bulk of the negotiation.

Eurosceptic MP Steve Baker has attacked the prime minister’s negotiating team saying trade negotiator Crawford Falconer should take over. A legacy name from the party, Iain Duncan-Smith, has started to argue for a politically led last stage to the negotiation.

Mrs May’s statement is along the lines that “The civil service team, which is led by Olly Robbins, remains the same.”

It’s more hypocrisy as she adds the de facto deputy prime minister, David Lidington, to the negotiating team along with the attorney-general, Geoffrey Cox.

Expect further PM-insisted legal hooks to be inserted into the already one-way valve of the Withdrawal Agreement.

Remember that the Withdrawal Agreement simply cuts the UK loose. The main terms for what happens next are in the so-called Political Declaration, the well-known 26 pages of aspirational materials to be negotiated in the months and years following the click of the Withdrawal Agreement.

I’m drawn to remember the subtext from the European Union along the lines that no Sovereign state leaving the Union should be able to attain better conditions outside the Union than of members within it.

There'll be a last minute battle for the photo opportunities. It can be spun either way with the right picture content. A bit like those NHS red bus pictures.

It's a pity that there isn’t really any usable opposition to what is happening.

Mr Corbyn has yesterday made a pronouncement that “The whole process looks like it’s running down the clock by saying, well, it’s either the problems and the difficulties of no deal or support a deal that’s already been rejected by the House of Commons.”

Too little, too late.