ANALYSIS: With Theresa May's deal sunk, Parliament has the chance to take control
3 min read
And so the Brexit caravan rolls on to Monday.
With Theresa May's deal little more than a pile of smoking embers, MPs have one last chance in 72 hour's time to come up with a Brexit plan that they can live with.
If they don't, it now seems increasingly likely that we are looking at either a no-deal Brexit that virtually no one wants on 12 April, or a general election soon afterwards that most people are dreading.
Although Downing Street tried to later play it down, the Prime Minister's comments shortly after her latest defeat were significant: "I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this House."
Make no mistake, if a majority of MPs cannot agree to an alternative to May's plan on Monday night - and they rejected eight of them on Wednesday - then it is difficult to foresee a scenario which does not involve yet another election. Quite simply, if Parliament cannot agree on the greatest challenge facing the UK since the war, maybe it's time for a new Parliament.
The Prime Minister insisted she would plough on, battered and bloodied, trying to somehow cobble together the numbers to get her deal over the line in the next week-and-a-half.
But the fact that promising to resign was still not enough to persuade 34 Tory MPs to support her tells its own story.
And that's before you consider the fact that the DUP seem as immovable as ever, even if their erstwhile Brexiteer comrades Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg abandoned them at the first whiff of grapeshot.
In a statement after the result, deputy leader Nigel Dodds said that for as long as the Irish backstop exists, they cannot give the PM their backing.
"The Democratic Unionist Party has consistently and repeatedly indicated that we could not support the Withdrawal Agreement because of the construction of the backstop," he said. "We have reached this view from a principled position as we do not believe the Withdrawal Agreement is the best way forward for the United Kingdom."
Those are not the words of a man whose party is paving the way for a dramatic climbdown.
There is, however, one last chance for Parliament to plot a course out of the current impasse. A compromise solution which would see a permanent customs union tacked onto the Withdrawal Agreement came closest to success on Wednesday and - crucially - could satisfy the DUP's concerns over the Irish border.
On Monday night, will MPs take inspiration from the Vote Leave campaign slogan and finally Take Back Control of Brexit?
