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If you have to blackmail someone into doing it, the chances are it's not a good idea.

If you have to blackmail the Prime Minister, Cabinet and Parliament; threaten your friends; ignore the predictions of businessmen, scientists and experts; commit the grossest breach of campaign finance law in history; steal people's data' rely on Russian bots, fake news algorithms and racists; paint lies on a bus and keep Chris Grayling in a job because he was one of the people who thought this was all a great idea, then it's almost certainly a festering dungheap of a plan and it should be ditched before the cack hits the spreading device.

As the United Kingdom careens into the final fortnight of self-buggery which Brexit has become, hurling itself at the Article 50 deadline and increasingly aware it can get there only by blowing up Northern Ireland and promoting Grayling to PM, it is unlikely we'll have much time for thought.

But in the brief space where Laura Kuenssberg fills her lungs before launching into the commentary for our anaesthetic-free national amputation we have a last, brief opportunity to pause.

On June 23, 2016, 26.5% of the UK voted to jump in a legislative blender. Dragging with them children, prisoners, the mentally-ill, can't-be-bothereds and the 25% who expressed a strong view for staying out of the blender, they demanded to leave the European Union.

At that point it was possible. Perhaps unwise, but doable if we had some intellectual titans in charge who could unpick 40 years of law, undertake the biggest trade deal programme we've ever needed, and unite a country divided along lines that were cultural, political, intellectual and financial.

(Image: Getty Images)

Instead we got Margot Leadbetter, who thought this was a great way to keep those frightful immigrants out. Her plan was to concentrate on scraping mould off the jam in the hope we could still eat it for tea, while giving the task of complex negotiations to three of the thickest people in blue rosettes she could find.

"The Free Trade Agreement that we will do with the EU should be one of the easiest in human history," said The Disgraced Liam Fox. "There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside," wittered David Davis. "There is no plan for a no deal, because we're going to get a great deal," burbled Boris Johnson.

Two of these titans fell over each other to crash the pound and resign first, having wasted two years of nationally-critical time in farting about, arguing, telling Margot she was doing it wrong and achieving absolutely naff all.

The third has managed six trade deals that are exactly the same as our current deal, so long as we are prepared to trade all our cars, financial services, food, fissile material and chemicals with Israel, Palestine, Switzerland, South Africa, the Faroe Islands and Chile.

But never mind all that - we know, now, that they were interested only in leadership and lacked the ability to grab it even from a vicar's daughter with a hacking cough. Liam Fox realised slightly later than the rest of us he couldn't do any deals, and the other two spent their time doing the political equivalent of wiping their bums on the windows.

It says much that one of them was replaced by a man who did not know what Dover was for, and the other by someone who was the most useful idiot David Cameron knew.

We're now facing a vote on a really bad deal which Margot will probably lose, a vote on having no deal which Parliament will never support, and a situation where the country STILL can't decide what it wants and Margot has to ask the EU if it will let us faff about like morons a bit longer.

If it refuses, we crash out without any agreement on what happens next. That will delight all those in a position to short the pound, move their investment funds to Dublin or destroy the NHS with a cripplingly-massive overnight increase in costs, and seriously annoy 73.5% of the country.

The hard fact of the matter is that nobody voted for no deal. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

The Leave campaign didn't just specifically state that if it won, there would be a plan in place before we left.

It explicitly said there'd be a cross-party negotiation with the EU. It said it would include experts from business, law, and civil society. They described a four-year legal framework in which they would pass laws ending the right of EU citizens to come here, cut 5% off VAT on household energy bills, guarantee £100m a week extra for the NHS, a free trade bill and the end of jurisdiction for the European Court of Justice.

Not a single one of those promises has been enacted. Despite the fact that the greasy arsewipes who promised it have been in government THIS ENTIRE TIME.

It's also worth pointing out that, had any of the above actually happened, there'd probably be majority support in both Parliament and the country. But then, we'd all applaud a jam-smeared, diamond-hooved unicorn if it pranced down the street. If it was a real unicorn, which is to say a ton of insane horseflesh attached to a vicious spike with an unhealthy fixation on virgins, we'd be reaching for a gun.

(Image: @DavidGauke/Twitter)

Boris promised a deal. Gove promised a deal. The Leave literature, press conferences, posters and social media feeds all promised a deal. Not just any old deal - one that was actually better than the tariff-free, frictionless trade we already enjoy with 27 member states with a third off our membership costs and cashback.

Now we've got a deal. It's 585 pages of much-the-same, with clauses that involve us paying more, getting less, and restarting holy war in Belfast.

The wheels have not just come off the bus. The doors, windows, roof, exhaust manifold and main axle are lying behind us on a long, bumpy road and all we're left with is one seat, an accelerator jammed to the floor and a mindlessly-chirpy Chris Grayling offering advice to Margot as she tries to steer using only hope and the momentum derived solely from the fears of 65million people that we don't all die.

In such a situation, a grown-up nation stops. It agrees that a race entered 3 years ago has attracted no other competitors, cost jobs in the automotive industry, and led to a series of self-inflicted wounds while simultaneously screwing the NHS.

Only a toddler screams: "NO! I WANT!" Only a country with the same attitude as a 3-year-old promised a biscuit if they're good still demands 10 biscuits after a house-wrecking tantrum. Only someone with the mind of an infant says that, because it is what they want, it's what everyone must have despite the obvious consequences of increased poverty, more expensive medicines, higher taxes and fewer public services.

While they commentate themselves into a lather, willy-wave on rolling news, posture in Parliament and scream incessantly in the local pub about the will of the people, remember this:

You cannot respect a decision arrived at through disreputable means, dishonoured in its execution, and which dismays all those who look upon the absolute state of it. That's the sort of decision you disrespect, hard.

Euthanase Brexit. Now.