So why has “Get Brexit done” gained such traction? Because of an unspoken pact between politicians and the media over the framing of the process. It has been presented as a tense drama that will lead to a satisfying end-of-season finale—a series of “knife-edge votes” that will eventually deliver a deal, at which point Britain can revert to its pre-2016 reality of ceasing to care much about the existence of the EU. That approach turns everything into a high-stakes drama, which makes sense on a daily basis for hard-pressed editors—Brexit is undeniably complex, its details can be boring, and journalists are also covering an array of other important stories. But when the volume stays turned up to 11, month after month, most viewers feel the urge to change the channel.

Read: This is just the beginning of Brexit

There are also partisan reasons for the persistence of this “crunch vote” framing. The biggest and loudest voices among Britain’s still-powerful printed press supported Brexit. For these newspapers—the Daily Mail, The Sunday Times, and The Daily Telegraph among them—as well as their readers and Brexiteers generally, the intractable nature of the negotiations has increased their fears that Brexit could slip away, that Britain could become stuck in an endless transition, or that a second referendum could overturn the 2016 result. Creating momentum toward the exit is an effective counterpoint to these tendencies.

In the House of Commons on Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new Brexit deal passed the second of the three readings needed to enshrine it in law. Immediately afterward, however, a majority of lawmakers voted against the government’s rushed timetable for all further scrutiny of its details. Johnson has now asked the EU for an extension beyond October 31, when the U.K. was due to leave. As has now become common in British journalism, an anonymous “Number 10 source” quote was issued to journalists, fulminating against this turn of events. “Today Parliament blew its last chance,” it read. “This Parliament is totally broken.”

Except Parliament has not blown its last chance. The legislation is merely paused, despite empty government threats to scrap it entirely. (“Boris Johnson to Pull Brexit Bill If Timetable Not Approved,” read the headline on the BBC’s credulous story.) It is entirely possible that the deal could be approved, when Parliament feels it has had enough time to review the details. The government had offered it only three days to unpick the implications of a 115-page bill.

Read: The improbable triumph of Boris Johnson

This is democracy functioning as it should: ensuring that big decisions are taken only after due consideration. Yet the implication of several recent newspaper front pages has been not only that Parliament must make the “right” decision—but that it must be made right now, because any delay is antidemocratic. In this climate, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the October 31 deadline was always arbitrary. (The EU is undoubtedly tired of Britain’s long uncoupling, but it still appears to prefer extensions to a No Deal scenario.) Meeting the October deadline was a political choice. So was triggering the Article 50 process, which brought with it a two-year countdown to Britain’s exit, in March 2017.