Welcome to yet another week of Brexit madness. And God knows there's been enough of them over the past six months. Time and again, the hype around a week's events have been billed as decisive only for everyone to find that they actually know less at the end of the week than they did at the beginning. Brexit as faster than the speed of light, where the only sure way of leaving the EU appeared to be to race back to the early Seventies when we weren't actually in it.

But this week does feel critical. The government, parliament and the country are in the last chance saloon – playing injury time added on to injury time – and something surely has to give. The question is what. Even now it's impossible to tell who will blink first. Anyone who says they know the answer is lying.

All we know for certain is that on Monday, MPs will once again seize back the parliamentary timetable from the government to hold a series of indicative votes on what they would like to happen next. But what they will actually be voting on is in the hands of the speaker, John Bercow. Last week, parliament voted on eight options and rejected them all. Now it is up to Bercow to whittle down the eight to three or four. Most likely a customs union, a Common Market 2.0, a second referendum on an approved Brexit deal and blocking No Deal through the revocation of Article 50.

Last week, parliament voted on eight options and rejected them all. Now it is up to Bercow to whittle down the eight to three or four.

The question now is how far MPs are prepared to shift from last week. How pure are the purists willing to be in order to find something on which parliament agrees? Ken Clarke's customs union is the only option that appears to be realistic, having been defeated by six votes first time round. Were the Lib Dems and the SNP, both of whom abstained last time, to back it as the least worst form of Brexit, then a customs union would have a guaranteed majority. But they are likely to hold out for a second Brexit referendum, so Clarke will have to rely on those Tory and Labour MPs who abstained first time round to deliver the necessary extra votes.

What happens next is anyone's guess. If MPs again say no to everything, then parliament is once again in gridlock, knowing what it doesn't want, but unable to agree on what it does. But even if the customs union option does pass, there's no imperative on the government to accept the will of parliament. Indeed there's every reason to believe Theresa May would go out of her way to block it. Not so much because customs union breaks one of the red lines she spelled out in her Lancaster house speech of 2017, but because it would split the Tory party. The hard Brexiters, both in the cabinet and the European Research Group, could never support this.

At some point this week, it is also probable that the prime minister will bring back her own deal for a fourth time, having managed to narrow her margin of defeat to 58 votes last Friday when she split the withdrawal agreement from the future political declaration. To get yet another chance, May first requires the indulgence of the speaker, who has made it clear he will not allow the government to bring back a defeated motion that is substantially the same. It's hard to know what she could add this time round to make it different, other than to beef up promises that parliament will have a more proactive role in future treaty negotiations.

But even if Bercow does allow a fourth go, on the grounds of it being in the national interest, it's still hard to see how the government can win. The Democratic Unionist Party has said it would rather remain in the EU than vote for May's deal. The remaining 25 hardliners of the ERG are unlikely to be bought off by the threat that voting down May's deal would inevitably lead to soft Brexit. That threat has been made repeatedly in the past and they haven't blinked.

The latest opinion polls indicate that voters blame the Tories for the Brexit mess and put Labour five points ahead.

Nor does it seem likely the government can pick off the Tory Remainers or Labour Leavers into switching sides. The fact that May has announced she will step down as prime minister if her deal gets passed has made many potential waverers more opposed to backing her, as they fear the next Tory leader – possibly Boris Johnson – would take the UK into a hard Brexit and renege on any promises that had been given on protecting workers' rights.

Should May's deal go through, of course, then it is game over. Or at least it will be the end of the beginning of the game. The Tories will have their own leadership election campaign over the next few months and the new prime minister will lead the next stage of the Brexit negotiations when they start in the autumn. Warning: though these might start off relatively amicable, they are likely to become even more contentious than the withdrawal agreement. The divorce settlement was always going to be the easy bit. We could be arguing over the future trading relationship for years to come.

But if May's deal is – as seems likely – voted down a fourth time and she is unwilling to accept parliament's indicative vote (assuming it passes) for a customs union, then we could be heading for a general election. And with it an inevitable long extension of Article 50, possibly into 2020, in which everything is up for grabs once more and we are pretty much back to where we started.

It seems incredible that three days after the UK was due to leave the EU, we are still none the wiser of the outcome.

Yet many Tories will be begging the prime minister to avoid an election at all costs. Not because they think that the last thing the country needs at this moment is the trauma of an election, but because they think they will lose one. The latest opinion polls indicate that voters blame the Tories for the Brexit mess and put Labour five points ahead. A quick election in which May was still prime minister, with the Tories having had no time to replace her, could be disastrous.

There again, May could feel she has run out of road, with all options looking equally desperate: a hard No Deal Brexit that could be ruinous for the economy and split the party; a soft customs union Brexit that could split the party; a general election that could see the Tories out of government for a decade. But come the end of the week these may be the only three choices available to her.

So here we are. A referendum that was called to heal divisions in the Tory party has split the country in two. The trenches on both sides are being dug ever deeper with no sign of anyone backing down. Whatever happens – hard Brexit, soft Brexit, no Brexit – there will be millions of people who feels disenfranchised and angry at the outcome. It seems incredible that three days after the UK was due to leave the EU, we are still none the wiser of the outcome. It's negligence on a national scale by the government not to have sought consensus. Who knows what the week will bring? I don't. See you on the other side. I hope.

Read more:

Why we have zero sympathy left for Theresa May

George Osborne: 'I’ve sat down and had a drink with Theresa May since all of this'

How to survive Brexit anarchy