Is it possible that no one in her army of very well educated civil servants was capable of spotting the realities of the situation? Or is it certain that the Prime Minister insisted on believing what she wanted to believe regardless of the evidence.
To her credit May has tended to avoid some of the worst of the ideological fantasies that run deep with fanatical Brexiteers. She has shown considerable awareness of how damaging it would be for Britain to be without a free trade deal with the EU and she has been willing to offer a great deal of money to try and hang onto it.
The only reason she got an eye watering sum through her divided Cabinet is that both sides of the split saw a gain in it. The ones who never wanted to put business at risk by leaving realised that it was a necessary evil. The ones who were obsessed by Brexit realised that they could use it for propaganda purposes. Instead of recognising how much they had damaged the country they immediately set about telling their supporters that the divorce payment showed how much we had been spending to be part of the club. Actually it did nothing of the kind. It illustrated how much pension liabilities we have built up – much of which will go to British citizens like Nigel Farage. And it also illustrated how much shared cost there is in running a whole series of EU quangos- most of which we now need to replicate at even greater cost.
Throwing money at a problem isn’t always an entirely wise strategy. May is now left with only three options. The first, and most likely, is to find a form of words that fudges the problem enough to kick it down the road a bit further. Someone somewhere in the UK or the EU is likely to be clever enough to find a way of getting past this deadline by not solving the problem and avoiding facing up to it for a bit longer.
The second option is to leave the EU without a deal. At this stage, having so publicly offered so much money to try and avoid going down this route, it is hard to see how May could survive that choice becoming UK policy. And if May goes then it is hard to see the Conservative Party surviving let alone the government. The divisions will be horrendous and would dwarf anything we’ve seen so far.
So that leaves us with the third possibility. Sooner or later she may be tempted to solve the Northern Ireland problem by removing the need for a customs border anywhere. She could decide to face down her Brexit fanatics and to keep every part of the UK inside the customs union. That means signing a deal that commits the UK to obeying every rule the EU passes without being a decision making member.
Her choices, within her own constraints, are therefore very stark ones. Either she gives in to hard Brexit and does something that she knows will damage the country very badly. After all she voted Remain and has offered phenomenal amounts of money to try and get a deal. Or alternatively she faces down her party’s Brexiteers and the UKIP fanatics and signs up to something almost identical to what the UK already had.
I expect her to make the bold choice. To fudge it. To cling onto power by avoiding facing up to reality for a bit longer. To kick the can down the road. To try and limit the damage of leaving as much as she possibly can. And to tie herself in knots over the tensions between her obsession with immigration and her recognition of the trading realities.
Or, of course, she could just go for the simple option. Get out of this mess by offering a second referendum. This time on the realities not on the promises.