BREXIT GIVES US A PICTURE OF WHAT ACTUAL ATTEMPTS TO WITHDRAW FROM A UNION LOOK LIKE. IT HAS DISCREDITED ONCE-COMMON CLAIMS THAT SECESSION FROM CANADA WOULD BE A QUICK AND PAINLESS AFFAIR.

With the defeat of Wednesday’s vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s Conservative government, Britain would appear to have reached a position of perfect immobility: it cannot move forward out of the Brexit bog, and it cannot move back. All of the options before it are either impossible or inconceivable; either way, they are not going to happen.

The past few weeks have indeed been a series of things that did not happen. First, May was not defeated in last month’s caucus vote on her leadership, though as none of her critics among the party’s boisterous contingent of Brexiteers had the first clue how to proceed it’s not clear much would have changed if she had been.

Tuesday, the deal her government had negotiated with the European Union on the terms of withdrawal — or non-withdrawal, as the case may be — failed to pass in the House of Commons. Well, “failed to pass” rather understates things: “was defeated by the largest margin in British history” would be closer to the mark.

Ordinarily, such a catastrophic rebuke on so fundamental a matter of government policy would be enough to bring down a government on its own. But since the passage of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act under the Conservative-liberal Democrat coalition in 2011, an explicit vote of confidence is required.

Had Wednesday’s confidence vote passed, there would have followed under the same law first an attempt to form another government with the confidence of the House, or failing that fresh elections. But it is not clear what either could have accomplished. Since none of the various Brexit options, from a second referendum through the various shades of free trade agreements with Europe (these are named for the signatory country: Norway, Canada, “Canada plus,” and so on) all the way to a “hard Brexit” without special trade ties of any kind, would appear to command majority support among MPS, it is hard to see how a new government could have succeeded any better than the last.

And since the Brexit positions of the two major parties are neither clear, nor unified, nor even distinctive — both leaders are for some form of it, sort of, though neither can credibly claim to speak for their party — it’s even harder to see how an election would have clarified anything.

At any rate, armed with her non-mandate not to proceed, May will now presumably attempt to persuade the EU to renegotiate the deal the Commons has just rejected. But without knowing what Britain wants, her negotiating partners will be hard pressed to come up with proposals that would satisfy it, and if they could they would have no incentive to offer any. Britain’s bargaining position would be weak enough if it were united behind strong leaders and a coherent plan, but as it has neither it is scarcely worth talking to.

If there is, after Tuesday’s Commons vote, no deal, and if no new deal is likely, does it follow Britain will exit without a deal, merely because that is what is required under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union? The Article 50, with a March 29, 2019 deadline, that Britain invoked to kick off this whole process?

Of course not. If there is anything on which there is a consensus among Britons, beyond a hard core of the most rabid Brexiteers, it is that a no-deal Brexit, in which Britain’s existing trade ties with Europe would simply vanish overnight, is inconceivable.

So the deadline will have to be postponed? Not so fast: that requires agreement from the EU’S other 27 members. That’s not going to happen, either, or not without a break in the stalemate in Britain: either agreement on a new plan, or an election, or a second referendum. On none of which, I repeat, is there any such agreement.

If all of this sounds immensely, even comically futile, it has at least served one purpose. It has given us a picture of what actual attempts to withdraw from a long-established legislative union, as opposed to fantasies, look like. In particular, it has permanently discredited once-common claims that secession from Canada would be a quick and relatively painless affair.

All of the same rhetoric was heard, remember, from the Brexiteers, both before and after the 2016 referendum: how opinion in Britain, despite the narrow referendum result, would now coalesce behind the Leave position; how Britain would have the upper hand in negotiations with the EU, from which it would emerge with all of the advantages of full economic union with Europe and none of the disadvantages; how if nothing else this would settle matters, after so many fruitless years of controversy.

Exactly the opposite has proved the case, on every point. Britain remains divided on the issue, though with clear signs of buyer’s remorse: there has been a sharp rise in support for a second referendum. It has got nowhere in negotiations with the EU, which has offered the bare minimum required to avoid being accused of bad faith. The best it can now hope for is to be permitted to keep the access to the European market it currently enjoys, under the same European rules it has always chafed under — only now without any say in how these are written.

All this, for a sovereign country that was half-out of the EU from the start — with its own currency, for example — and a union whose constitution made clear provision for how a member state could withdraw. How it could have been imagined that a province in a federation, with the much-tighter integration that implies, and in the absence of any explicit constitutional process for secession whatever, could have fared any better, is beyond comprehension.

Once, all such objections could be waved away with a simple “oui, et c’est possible.” From now on the answer will be: that’s what they said about Brexit.