Maybe you can admire someone while agreeing they’re not very good at something, like when a toddler makes a sterling effort to finish a bowl of cereal and only gets some of it on her face, clothes, chair, nearby floor and, inexplicably, in her ears. “Well done!” we say, reaching for the paper towels. This should not be the standard by which the leader of the world’s (for now) fifth biggest economy and nuclear power is judged. The stronger version of the ‘Hooray for May’ theory is that, against almost insurmountable political opposition and attacks, May has implacably hacked a path towards the goal she always pledged to reach on behalf of the British people, like a stiff upper-lipped 19th century explorer machete-ing onwards through a hostile foreign jungle. To this theory I have three responses.

Loading One: Persistence isn’t a virtue in itself. If I turned a corner and ran headfirst into a brick wall I shouldn’t win praise for saying "well, I’ll just duck my head and run faster next time". Two: Look at what she has actually done, which is not very good. Three: Look at what she’s threatening to do next, which is not very good. In the last week, May did what she had flatly denied 108 times to the UK parliament she would do: seek to delay Brexit.

Even if you consider this the best result in the circumstances, that doesn’t change the political point: if you insist you’re not going to do something for a very long time then do it, why should anyone believe your claims about what you’ll do next? You may never bluff again, and even if you don’t, or weren't the first time, people will suspect you do and did. May fell into the utterly foreseeable hole she had dug for herself. Then on Wednesday night, after deciding on a delay, May addressed the nation from Number 10 and blamed it on MPs "playing political games" and holding "arcane procedural rows". "I’m with you," she told voters. Politicians who pretend not to be politicians are everywhere these days, but for a country’s elected leader to pretend she isn’t one is next-level bullshit. May played a lead role in the Commons farce. Just a week before, she voted against her own motion to reject a ‘no deal’ Brexit after it was amended in a way that amounted to nothing of any consequence, to make a political point that was lost anyway in the chaos. The next day she voted for the delay she had vowed wouldn’t happen.

Loading And May’s criticism went down a treat with her parliamentary colleagues, who all believe they’re personally doing a terrific job (narrator’s voice: they aren’t) and it’s just the other MPs letting the country down. Sure, May was annoyed by the Commons’ hopeless paralysis and inability to vote for anything that would bring substantial progress on Brexit. Who wouldn’t be? But why hold a press conference to say that, and pretty much only that, precisely when she most needs to get more MPs on side in order to get the Brexit she presumably still wants? One Cabinet minister reportedly called it "the most inept performance of a Downing Street of all time". Then there was May’s work in Brussels on Thursday, as she tried to persuade EU leaders to agree to delay Brexit. Reports from inside the room included her being "evasive, had no plan and even seemed confused", and one EU prime minister said "the only thing that came through with clarity was her lack of a plan". In the end they literally wrote one for her.

So she’s not been great recently. British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday. Credit:AP Before that, she was also not great. When the divorce deal she did with the EU was obviously going to be rejected by the Commons in December, she put off the vote. When it was eventually voted on and lost, badly, she brought it back for another vote with a handful of legal footnotes, and it was unsurprisingly voted down again. The identical deal will likely be voted down again next week. And all the time the country got closer to a no-deal Brexit. May is not the only person in this game whose idea of compromise is to insist the other person give in, but it’s a hell of a game to play for someone whose job is to have the country’s best interests at heart. A no-deal Brexit is predicted to be a Global Financial Crisis-level blow to the economy with the loss of thousands of jobs. May has given no reason to believe she doubts this, and yet she has insisted it is the only alternative she will accept to ratifying her deal. And she is going to keep pressing her opponents up against this dilemma until something cracks.

Even if this cliff-edge brinkmanship works, and hardcore Brexiters or the DUP or Labour fold, it was a hell of a risk to play with a lot of people’s livelihoods and the country’s future. Nevertheless, May kept doggedly maneuvering towards a binary choice between her deal or no deal, with the real and rising chance it might be the latter. Consensus, to her, means consent. Which is a fine political tactic from a position of power, not so much for a PM of a minority government pushing a policy that polls show the country hates. Contrast the other EU national leaders in Brussels on Thursday: 27 very different leaders in personality and politics, who began the evening in what sounds like serious disagreement on a Brexit delay then reached unanimity on a new common ground a few hours later, after a nice meal of duckling a l'Orange. Is there a way May could achieve this in the UK? She has barely even tried to find out. There have been repeated attempts to try to set up a process by which the Commons can hold a series of ‘indicative votes’ to determine the sort of Brexit it would be prepared to compromise on.

Loading There has also been, reportedly, a compromise offered by the opposition in which it would vote her deal through on the condition the public get a final say. There has been an attempt to soften the deal into a Brexit that the EU would likely accept: remaining within its customs union. May rejected all these, because of what she claims was the motivation of the majority in the 2016 Brexit vote, which she insists is a matter of fact rather than just her opinion (in the last few days she has finally accepted the need for indicative votes, but has not yet committed to be bound by them). There have been a few token meetings with opposition party leaders and Tory opponents, but they came out reporting May just used them to rehearse arguments she had made already in public.

Why is/was she so intransigent? It’s hardly that she’s so enamoured with her own deal; she’s talked it down herself, calling it a compromise and the best available in the circumstances. The real reason is probably that, unless it was in absolute extremis (and possibly even then), even entertaining the chance of a ‘soft’ Brexit or a revocation of Brexit could tear May’s party apart and possibly end her premiership. So instead she pressed the country to the brink of a no-deal Brexit, because apparently the risk of ructions in the Conservative Party is much worse than the risk of screwing the country. Deliberately or, to be generous, in effect she put her political interest above that of the country. Not what you’d hope from a leader in a big crisis. And is she even good at being a partisan party leader? Not according to former Conservative MP, now Times columnist Matthew Parris:

Loading "Time and again my informants — MPs, former MPs, civil servants, special advisers — tell me, eyes flashing, that … [May is] not normal. She’s extraordinary. Extraordinarily uncommunicative; extraordinarily rude in the way she blanks people, ideas and arguments. "Theresa May, they tell me (in a couple of cases actually shouting) is the Death Star of modern British politics. … a political black hole." None of this is to say Jeremy Corbyn and Labour have helped in any way. That’s the topic for another rant. But they’re the opposition. Brexit is not their project and there’s no reason why they should help May commit the country to self-harm. Finally, this whole situation could probably have been avoided if it weren’t for May's colossal mistake two years ago.