Theresa May excels herself in another exercise in futility

Was this the moment Theresa May finally lost all touch with reality? The day the Maybot’s circuits overloaded and reverted to their factory settings. The day when history was rewritten in such a way as to make it virtually unrecognisable.

Shortly after midday rumours started to circulate that the prime minister was going to make a statement at 1.45pm. An important one. A lectern and flags job. The sense of panic was palpable. And not just inside No 10. Everyone felt it. The combination of the prime minister, a lectern and an unscheduled statement usually signifies turmoil for the country and disaster for her. A general election? A resignation? A visitation from Bono? Anything was possible.

As it happened we nearly didn’t get any statement at all. The power had gone down inside No 10 and there was no live news feed. Sometimes the metaphors write themselves. But when she did eventually appear, 20 minutes later than planned, we were treated to the bizarre sight of May barricading herself inside No 10 with a solitary BBC cameraman – she clearly didn’t trust either the lectern not to blow over in the wind or the assembled hacks outside not to ask awkward questions at the end – to announce that what she had said on Thursday in her press conference (which went disastrously and ended in humiliation) was what she had actually meant to say all along.

May, who has turned exercises in futility into an artform during her time in office, excelled herself this time. Nothing had changed from yesterday, when nothing had changed from the day before. Except this time she wanted to appear determined and steely instead of sweaty and terrified. She had looked into the abyss of her own career and decided that if she was going down then she would do her best to take her party and the country with her.

The Salzburg summit hadn’t gone very well, she began. Nothing like a statement of the obvious to get things rolling. But now she wanted to make some things very clear to the EU. Cue her best death stare. The one she usually reserves for Boris Johnson. What she was clear about was that the Chequers plan – rubbished by many Tories, dismissed by the EU leaders and without a prayer of getting through parliament – was still the plan she intended to get through parliament and get the EU to accept.

As a denial of reality it was already a bravura performance, but within minutes things had lurched into another space-time continuum. One that even Stephen Hawking could never have imagined. Everything was basically the EU’s fault. It was the EU that had forced the UK into leaving the EU. It was the EU that was making the UK confront the possibility of a hard Irish border because the UK had voted to leave. She had fallen over backwards to come up with a sensible solution and the EU had come up with none of their own. Other than, of course, to make it clear right from the start that the Canada and Norway models were the only options available and there could be no cherrypicking. Madness.

“I’ve never treated the EU with anything other than respect,” she said, her bottom lip quivering with what she hoped was righteous indignation. And she wanted some respect back. She had a point. She could have handled things better – face it, almost anyone could – but the EU could also have been slightly less charmless. But then they were probably only following the example of Boris and the other Brexiters who make a point of disrespecting May on an almost daily basis. Maybe Donald Tusk and Emmanuel Macron had got the impression she liked being treated that way.

May appears now as a woman with almost no respect for herself. Otherwise she would have long since walked away from a job she clearly does not like and a Brexit in which she does not believe. She knows she is compromised and she hates herself for it. It shows in every gurn, in every awkward hand gesture.

With a quick 180-degree turn, she left the room. A statement that had been meant to make her appear resolute had only highlighted her weakness. An exercise in damage limitation – to wash away the sins of Salzburg – that had always been doomed to failure. When you don’t having anything to say, it’s usually best to say nothing. But May just couldn’t stop herself from carrying on digging.