“THIS was the week Brexit died”, declared the PM's former adviser, Nick Timothy. It's hard to disagree, even though it's not clear what comes next, and our undead Prime Minister staggers on.

Jacob Rees Mogg's hard Brexiteer faction conveniently buried itself last month, following its failed coup attempt. None of the leading Brexiteers who brought us the 2016 Brexit campaign, David Davies, Liam Fox, Boris Johnson, are still significant players. Johnson made a speech last week at the height of Theresa May's parliamentary crisis, which went down like a lead balloon and was hardly reported.

Ukip – whose electoral rise in 2014/15 persuaded David Cameron to call the EU referendum - is also pushing up the daisies. It's leader, Gerard (who he?) Batten, would be basking in well earned obscurity had it not been for his reckless decision to hire the far right activist Tommy Robinson, as a political adviser. This caused Nigel Farage, the only 'kipper who's ever had a national political profile, to disown the party he more or less created as a vehicle to achieve Brexit.

The quiet death of Brexit looks a bit of a mystery. They were supposed to be the winners, after all. The Remain side was shattered and confused afer 2016. Most MPs in Westminster are pro-Europeans, but they kept a timorous low profile for two years. Jeremy Corbyn was terrified about losing swathes of safe Labour seats to immigrant-bashing Brexiteers, so he cynically backed Brexit from the start.

Liam Fox was wrong last week: Brexit isn't being “stolen”, it was given away. The Brexiteers were incapable of providing any coherent plan, despite being given every chance. Boris Johnson was handed the key post of Foreign Secretary. The hardest of the hard Brexiteers, ex SAS soldier, David Davis, was made Secretary of State for Exiting the EU. They all deserted their posts.

They were never able to explain how leaving the EU without a trade deal could possibly be achieved without intolerable disruption and unacceptable social and economic costs. The waffle about reverting to “WTO rules” was just that. In 2016, Michel Barnier offered a bog-standard, Canada style free trade deal straight off the peg. But it was so obviously worse than the comprehensive deal we already have with the EU, that even Brexiteers avoided arguing for it.

It was folly to think a country like Britain could carve out some retro copy of the British Empire by reviving Liam Fox once called the “anglosphere”. No one talks of “Global Britain” any more. The International Trade Secretary failed to deliver the cornucopia of global deals he promised for one obvious reason: most countries are trying to form trade deals with the EU, like Japan and Canada, or are trying to rival EU, like the USA and China.

Brexiteers were stuck with a leader, Theresa May, who is not only a Remainer, but a self-styled “difficult woman”. One of the conspiracy theories doing the rounds is that she never intended Brexit to succeed, despite her Florence red lines and her promises about “no deal being better than a bad deal”. But no one seriously believes that the PM tried to sabotage her own negotiations. She did what a Remain politician would be expected to do: come to an arrangement that is close to being in the European Union while leaving it.

Unfortunately, through incompetence, Theresa May ended up with a legally-binding Withdrawal Agreement that, everyone now agrees, is much worse than remaining in the European Union. The belated publication of the Legal Advice from the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, (only released after the government was ruled in contempt of parliament) didn't tell us much we didn't know or suspect. But by stripping away the PM's political spin, the document confirmed everyone's worst suspicions.

Cox made clear that Northern Ireland would be remaining in the single market for goods, and the full EU customs union, in the backstop and after. “For regulatory purposes” he affirmed, “GB is essentially treated as a third country by Northern Ireland”. This is precisely the regulatory divergence from the UK that the PM promised would never happen. As did the Scottish Secretary,David Mundell, who should have resigned on the spot.

Moreover, there's no unilateral exit route from the backstop. “In international law” Cox wrote “the Protocol would endure indefinitely until a superseding agreement took its place…” Britain can't back out of the backstop without the EU's agreement. So much for sovereignty. Theresa May's Brexit deal is not so much a capitulation, as a self-inflicted incarceration. It was an object lesson in how not to negotiate.

Right now, in the European Union, Britain has a vote, a voice, and a veto. A vote in the Council of Ministers; a voice in the European Parliament; and a veto on most key issues of that affect our national interest. Under the May's Withdrawal Treaty we have none of these. Britain becomes a rule taker, with little or no say shaping them, and only a remote prospect of negotiating something better in future. And no right to walk away.

Mrs May thought that by securing the end of free movement she would receive plaudits from the anti-immigrant press and the Tory party. But things have moved on. There is no refugee crisis right now, and EU migration has gone into reverse. Tory MPs seem determined to vote against Mrs May on Tuesday, and she may have to pull the vote at the very last moment.

With hard Brexit dead, and Theresa May's deal unacceptable, MPs are belatedly scrabbling for some alternative. The Norway/EEA option presents obvious problems - not least a continuation of free movement. But as this column argued last week, free movement was never as free as Brexiteers claim, and the vast majority of migrants come from non-EU countries. Since EEA/EFTA is the only deal the EU will accept, other than the Withdrawal Agreement, many MPs are turning to it by default.

Norway is also “rule taker”, in that it is not represented in the institutions of the EU. But Leavers used to extol the “Norway/Iceland model” because EEA/EFTA countries can strike their own trade deals. It also has its own court, separate from the European Court of Justice. Britain doesn't have to apply to join, because we are technically still a member of the EEA through the single market treaty. And we can leave it, under Article 127, unlike the May Treaty.

If and when Theresa May’s deal is voted down, the choice will be down to a repeat referendum or Norway plus. Many believe that only a Peoples' Vote can resolve the deadlock. But I'm still not sure enough MPs agree. Many are worried that the result might be the same as 2016, only with social unrest.

These are difficult days, and the truth is that no deal is better than remaining in the EU. But the people have voted, and we lack strong evidence of a significant change in public attitudes since 2016. MPs, of all parties, are in the land of least worse options. Let's hope they choose the right one on Tuesday. God help us if they don't