The cliff-edge has moved a tiny bit further away, but it’s still there. Britain will not crash out of the European Union next Friday, thanks to a last act of clemency by the 27 nations we’re about to leave behind. But crashing out remains a possibility, even a likelihood. It might not be a deliberate choice made by the people of these islands, but rather an accident – the product of a series of decisions that were taken and, more often, not taken. Just as the imperial powers stumbled into a war no one wanted in 1914, so the risk remains that we will not jump off the cliff that looms ahead of us, but stumble over it.

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Of course, it’s still possible that Theresa May will bring back her deal, perhaps as soon as Monday; that MPs will vote for it and the UK will leave in a stable and orderly fashion on 22 May. But it hardly seems likely. There was a time, in the middle of this week, when you could imagine that happening. MPs were clearly spooked by the imminence of a no-deal crash-out in a matter of days, a prospect so terrifying that the leaders of the TUC and the CBI broke from all precedent to issue a joint warning of a “national emergency”, predicting that if there was no deal, “the shock to our economy would be felt by generations to come”. Previously hostile MPs talked of swallowing their objections and voting for May’s withdrawal agreement. But two things happened to halt that shift just as it was beginning.

The first was May’s televised address to the nation on Wednesday night. It came as a reminder that not every populist demagogue has charisma. Theresa May gave a speech that could have come from Donald Trump or Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, pitting the people against the wicked elite that had betrayed them – the elite being MPs who had prevented the people’s will from being done. “I am on your side,” she said, casting herself as the embodiment of the popular will, frustrated by the pesky meddling of democracy.

It was classic, and insidious, populism. May does not look the part – the vicar’s-daughter persona, the school headteacher demeanour – but that has concealed for too long the reality that, even if she lacks their swagger, she shares with Trump, Orbán and Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro a contempt for democratic norms. The clues were always there, in her “citizens of nowhere” speech and in her crush-the-saboteurs rhetoric, but Wednesday removed any doubt. Her Trump-in-heels routine also alienated the very MPs whose votes she needs.

Second is that very two-week delay granted by the EU. Just as minds were beginning to concentrate, the extension has allowed them to blur again. Now MPs can vote against May for the third time, hopeful that something else may turn up. That something else is expected to be a series of votes, perhaps on Wednesday, in which MPs can, at long last, express a preference beyond the binary choice of support or opposition to May’s deal.

Surely this mechanism offers the path away from the cliff edge? Not necessarily. The most obvious danger is that none of the alternatives will command a majority. The echo here is with House of Lords reform more than a decade ago. Parliament agreed that the Lords needed change but, presented with a list of options, it could not agree on what that change should be. As a result, the second chamber stayed just as it was.

A further obstacle is political rather than procedural. Plenty of MPs predict a no-deal crash-out would be apocalyptically awful, but others have concluded that any alternative requiring a long delay would be even worse. Labour MPs in leave seats fear telling constituents who thought Britain would have left the EU by now that, on the contrary, we’re now obliged to hold elections to the European parliament in June. That would be an “absolute disaster”, one told me, predicting that pro-Brexit voters’ fury will be such that we’ll see “‘Tommy Robinson’ elected – or worse”. In other words, MPs might not be quite as determined to avoid no deal as you’d imagine. But let’s say that, somehow, the Commons overcomes these hurdles and finds an alternative.

Even then, the battle to swerve away from no deal would be far from over. MPs might well vote to avoid that calamity, but who’s to say Theresa May will listen? Who’s to say she won’t simply repeat the mantra that will be her epitaph: “Nothing has changed”? After all, parliament has already voted to rule out no deal – less than 10 days ago, as it happens – and May promptly ignored it. She continued to insist MPs had to choose between her deal and no deal, as if the latter remained an option. The group of senior MPs behind next week’s amendments are talking of wresting the initiative from the prime minister by taking control of the order paper, but that is far from straightforward. Professor Vernon Bogdanor, the sage on these matters, warns that such a move would be unconstitutional, since parliament cannot negotiate with a body such as the EU: that has to be the task of the executive.

But the much greater problem is, again, political, and it lies with May herself. The signs are numerous that she is moving towards accepting no deal as a palatable alternative to her withdrawal plan, should it fall. On Wednesday it was striking that, while she warned that she would refuse to preside over a long-delayed Brexit, she drew no parallel line in the sand over a no-deal exit. It seems May has been persuaded that while a delay to Brexit would sunder the Conservative party, her party could just about survive no deal – and, for May, Tory unity is all. Again, despite the dutiful persona, the best guide to May’s actions is to remember that she always puts party before country.

Afterwards, she tried to pretend her Wednesday speech had been a mere outburst of “frustration”. But we ought to take it seriously. It suggests that in a clash between May and parliament, she will not defer. Rather, she will insist that she, not it, has the legitimate mandate. The reverse is true: she is not an elected president, with a mandate of her own, but a servant of parliament. Still, she doesn’t see it that way. She apparently believes the 2016 referendum bestowed upon her some extra-parliamentary right to govern, indeed to dictate.

Remember, if no deal is to be avoided, it has to be her signature on that letter to Brussels demanding a further delay beyond April 12. Who would force her to do it? Remain-minded cabinet ministers might resign, but she could replace them. Bogdanor says the Commons could pass a motion declaring May to be in contempt of parliament if she tries to leave with no deal. “Morally it would be very powerful,” he says. But, he admits, “it would have no legal force”.

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Even a motion of no confidence in the government might not be enough: it triggers a 14-day period that could take us past 12 April. There can’t be an internal Tory move against her until December and, more importantly, too many Tory MPs and party chiefs are themselves comfortable with no deal. They are itching to remove her for other reasons, but not to prevent a crash-out Brexit.

There is still a way to avoid that national catastrophe. But it requires a lot of things to go right. It will mean MPs showing the collective skill and patience to pass a thread through the eye not of one needle, but several. It demands from politicians on all sides an unfamiliar willingness to compromise. As we learned more than a century ago, even one misstep can be fateful. And the clock is ticking.

• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist