EVEN by the dismal standards of Brexit, last week was exceptional. It was the moment not even the most gung-ho Leaver could pretend the process wasn’t a shambles.

After months of chirpy guff about a red, white and blue Brexit and a deal at the October meeting of EU leaders, Theresa May couldn’t keep her plates spinning. The crockery crashed around her in Brussels as she disappointed audiences both foreign and domestic – not enough compromise for the EU, too much for Tory and DUP MPs.

Frustration at yet another attempt to kick the can down the road, by adhering to EU rules beyond 2020 in a bid to answer the Irish border question, boiled over.

MP Johnny Mercer, once tipped as a Tory leader, described his own Government as a “s*** show” and said he could no longer bring himself to vote Conservative. Nick Boles, a mild-mannered former Tory minister, said the PM was “losing the confidence of colleagues” as past supporters turned against her.

The DUP also threatened to vote against the Budget in protest at backsliding, three Cabinet secretaries were put on “resignation watch”, and Scottish Secretary David Mundell and Scottish Tory MPs began muttering mutinously over the CFP. How did it come to this?

It’s long been clear that May cannot please everyone in her search for a Brexit deal – her Cabinet is divided, the Tory right wants a hard exit or a no deal, and the DUP won’t stand for a carve-out for Northern Ireland – so the theory was she would try to disappoint as few people as possible, then push on without them to get a deal.

But this week she disappointed so many groups, and so deeply, that now looks in doubt.

It started ominously when Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab made an unscheduled visit to Brussels to meet the chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier. With the EU council meeting on Wednesday, the groundwork for any Brexit deal should have been largely settled by officials. Raab’s Sunday intervention was a red flag it wasn’t.

May confirmed it the next day with an emergency statement in the Commons. The continued dispute over an Irish backstop meant there would be no deal this week. That, in turn, meant no EU council sign-off in November, with any final deal shuffled off to December or potentially January, uncomfortably close to the absolute deadline.

At issue, as always, was the EU’s insurance policy against a return of a hard border: keep Ulster in the single market and customs union in the event of a no deal. That backstop was unacceptable as it would estrange one part of the UK from the rest and undermine the Union, the PM said.

May called for “cool, calm heads” and insisted a deal remained possible, but EU Council president Donald Tusk promptly warned no deal was “more likely than ever before”.

Two solutions have been floated to avoiding a hard border with checkpoints and other infrastructure. No border, meaning the UK and Ireland maintain their current alignment with the EU, or an invisible border monitored electronically.

The first, Norway-style option is too soft a form of Brexit for most Tories and the DUP to stomach, while the technology needed for option two doesn’t exist. And given the UK Government’s history of costly IT failures, it might be many many years away.

On Tuesday, a marathon three-hour Cabinet passed without resignations as no decision was taken; the PM was forced to appeal for unity from her own colleagues.

Events began sliding downhill fast on Wednesday. May was peppered with questions about the Brexit timetable from Tory MPs at PMQs and failed to give definitive answers. She then went to Brussels and delivered a jittery 15-minute speech to EU leaders. Her audience wanted new thinking; she brought them old problems.

She ended with a plea for help in getting a deal she could sell back home.

Meanwhile, Raab was inflaming Westminster by saying the final meaningful vote on Brexit should be “unequivocal”, suggesting MPs would not be able to put forward amendments, such as having a People’s Vote. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell called it a “fix,” and Tory MPs Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry said it was trying to frustrate parliament and “an outrage”.

Thursday was worse. A new idea had “emerged”, May said. Perhaps the 21-month transition period after March 2019, when the UK adjusts to Brexit under continued EU rules and future trading relationships are thrashed out, could be extended “a matter of months” to help answer the Northern Ireland question.

The EU immediately said it would smile upon an extension beyond 2020.

May’s critics smelled a big fat rat. To them, this was classic dodge and delay. Unable to solve the Irish riddle, she wastrying to avoid it. She was accused of multiple betrayals.

The DUP and Tory right said it looked like the UK was going to remain in the EU’s orbit indefinitely, following EU rules without influencing them, and paying billions for the privilege. They also questioned how more time would magically deliver an answer that had proved so elusive.

Moderate Tories bemoaned the failure to deliver anything better than fudge. The opposition said it was chaos.

France’s President Macron said it was over to the UK to find a solution. “It’s no longer a technical issue, it’s for the political ability of the UK to reach an agreement that can be presented to us,” he sniffed.

Despite May suggesting it was only an option she never expected to use, it was reported her inner “war cabinet” had already agreed to the year-long extension in private.

There was more pushback on Friday. A longer transition implies more time in the Common Fisheries Policy, something much of northeast Scotland voted Leave to get out of, and which local Tories have touted as a benefit. Mundell demanded assurances May’s “vague” extension plan wouldn’t stop the UK withdrawing from the CFP, but the EU hates that kind of cherrypicking of its rules, so the PM now faces a cross-border schism in her party.

As to where it all goes now, Brexit has long ceased to be a sensible subject for speculation.

Barnier said on Friday even he didn’t know. British politics was too complex, with Brexit driven by “nostalgia” as well as logic, he said. While he wanted a deal, and no deal would be “very serious, very difficult” for the EU and Britain, he admitted talks could fail over the Irish border.

Yet a deal is still possible because no deal is so toxic. When it comes to the crunch in the Commons, a majority of MPs could well hold their noses “in the national interest” and back a rickety compromise rather than lurch into the abyss.

May is greatly diminished this week, her threadbare authority now practically transparent, her party as exasperated with her as the country.

But the lack of an obvious replacement and rivals too afraid of inheriting her problems to strike means her leadership, like Brexit, staggers on for now.