WE must all be relieved that Parliament has had its way, despite Theresa May’s mishandling of the Brexit negotiations, and MPs are now able to debate and vote on amendments and suggestions for improving the deal she’s advocating. At least we have a clearer idea of what’s likely to happen next.

What’s that? We don’t? You’re sick to the back teeth of Brexit and anything to do with it and have tuned it all out? Well, here’s what’s happened that, some people claim, changes everything.

There was an SNP motion to rule out a no-deal Brexit, comprehensively defeated, and a vote rejecting Labour’s customs union alternative to the withdrawal agreement, and then a huge majority for Yvette Cooper’s amendment that if Westminster votes against both the Government deal and no deal, there will then be a vote on whether to ask for an extension, and Mrs May finally conceded that there might be a delay, and then Jeremy Corbyn suggested for the first time that Labour might back a second referendum after all. And that was just on Wednesday.

So it’s all completely different now. Though no one knows how. Some have concluded that it makes a second referendum more likely, others have decided that it doesn’t, but it makes a delay in order to avert no deal more likely, while others yet have argued that it actually makes a no deal withdrawal more likely. I’ve come to the depressing view that, while all those things are theoretically possible, the most likely outcome is that we’ll end up with the Prime Minister’s terrible deal largely unchanged.

Since that’s the one that was rejected on January 15 with a majority of 230 votes against it – the largest defeat of a government policy in history (since universal suffrage came in) – I’m beginning to have my doubts about whether parliamentary representation is getting us anywhere. It’s not that no one, whether MPs or the general public, knows what they want; it’s more that no one can have what they want – except perhaps Mrs May, because the only thing she wants is to get her deal through.

Read more: Labour to back second referendum

It doesn’t matter that everyone (probably even her, secretly) thinks it’s a terrible deal, because some of them think it’s terrible because it doesn’t deliver “real” Brexit, while others think it’s terrible because it delivers too much Brexit.

Obviously, no Remain diehard is going to be pleased with any Brexit. But some Remainers accepted the result, but are – perfectly reasonably – eager that we should retain particular aspects of the previous regime when we leave. That could be all manner of things, from security co-operation to free movement of people, or membership of Euratom or the Erasmus scheme, or even the single market or (if you’re especially daft) a customs union.

Meanwhile, a lot of people who backed Leave now seem to have forgotten what the question was, and solemnly assure us that the retention of any of those things is a fatal compromise to the purity of the Brexit ideal. It’s of course possible to argue that a no-deal Brexit is better than Mrs May’s deal, or even to argue that it’s the best possible outcome, but you’d also have to accept that it’s a minority opinion, and not in any case what was on the ballot paper. And that, however swashbucklingly laisser-faire you may be, no one has made any provision whatsoever for launching the country and its industries into the bright new Singaporean tomorrow of unfettered free enterprise and trade on WTO terms.

It might seem odd, then, since MPs other than the most fanatical members of the ERG are clearly terrified of no deal, that they voted against the SNP amendment to rule out a no-deal withdrawal under any circumstances. But it isn’t, really. One reason is that you can’t do so unless you back Mrs May’s alternative, because nothing else is on offer. Another is that it would send a truly terrible signal to the EU, which would then have no incentive to negotiate. But the primary one is that it’s as silly as voting against gravity.

If you throw someone out a window, you can vote on whether to supply him with a parachute, catch him in a net or put a big mat on the ground. You can’t vote to abolish the ground. No deal is not one of a number of equal but different options. It is what is going to happen inevitably, unless you decisively pick something, anything, else. Whether you welcome that or it appals you doesn’t matter. It’s the default position.

And, as far as I can make out, that is even more the case if the Government were to ask for a delay (leaving aside the awkward point that all the other EU countries, individually, have to approve such a request: if, say, Malta were to object, we could only either vote quickly for Mrs May’s deal or get no deal on March 29). If we got a delay, we would still be past the point where we could rescind Article 50 unilaterally. The EU might let us have another vote, or change our minds, but I can’t see anything in the legislation that suggests we have any right to, which again leaves us back with the current deal or no deal.

Barring the fall of the Government, there’s no more likelihood of a second vote, even if Labour will now countenance it. Even then, another referendum is improbable for lots of reasons: it would take too long; there’s no majority for it at Westminster; there’s little appetite for it amongst the electorate, as opposed to Twitter and the chattering classes; there’s no consensus on what you could put on the ballot other than the current deal, no deal, or remain; and, above all, because there’s no chance that it would solve anything, because any answer you got would be equally catastrophic.

So the new situation is in fact much the same: Mrs May’s deal or no deal, or a vote that might create, if we’re allowed it, a brief delay (it has to be brief, because of the EU elections). In the event of a delay, it will still be Mrs May’s deal or no deal. It’s just that the deadline will be June, rather than March.