A place of desperation and near-certain doom, the last ditch is where Theresa May ended up this week

This week Theresa May flew to Strasbourg in what was breathlessly reported as a “last-ditch” attempt to secure changes to the Brexit withdrawal agreement. Was the prime minister a thoroughbred horse gracefully leaping the final obstacle at a steeplechase?

The ditch in 'last-ditch' is a defensive trench – the enemy has already overrun all your other ditches

Sadly, the ditch in “last-ditch” is a defensive trench, and if you are fighting in it then the enemy has already overrun all your other ditches. In Daniel Defoe’s political satire, Jure Divino (1706), the Prince of Orange is “pressed” by the French on the one hand and the English on the other. To this dilemma, Defoe writes, the prince “knew One effectual Remedy, viz. to lie in the last Ditch; intimating, that he would dispute every Inch of Ground with the Enemy, and at last would die defending the Liberties of his Country.”

From then on “to die in the last ditch” meant heroic but futile resistance, and “last-ditch”, from the late 19th century, also implied desperation and near-certain doom. The assurances May brought back from the EU were, of course, voted down on Tuesday, and so it turned out that calling her mission a “last-ditch” attempt was a rare example of accurate political prediction by the media.