Welcome to the “Hotel California Brexit”, as one backbench MP called the Theresa May’a Withdrawal Agreement last week. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. We've had hard Brexit, soft Brexit, blind Brexit and BINO Brexit (“in name only”), and now we're reduced to referencing the lyrics of country rock bands from the Seventies. Next up: Doors’ ”The End”.

The fear is that Theresa May has naively signed up to a customs arrangement from which Britain could never extricate itself. Under the so-called backstop agreement to avoid a hard border in Ireland, Britain has had to agree to remain in the EU Customs Union, (or Customs Territory). This is supposed to be temporary. But the 600 page document agreed with Brussels seems to say that Britain can only leave the backstop by “mutual consent”. Therefore, critics argue , she’s effectively handed the EU a veto on whether Britain is ever allowed to exit the Customs Union. What kind of Brexit is that? We’re prisoners of our own design.

The Prime Minister made a dignified, resilient stand last week, before a House of Commons that loathes this proposal. But there's a time when resilience turns into defiance, and then defiance turns into delusion. Theresa May’s staying power is the nation's curse, as she perseveres with a divorce deal which has no hope. She has finally united Leavers and Remainers, but only to the extent that they’re against her. She's lost both her Brexit Secretaries, a host of ministers and both houses of parliament. But, like Monty Python’s limbless Black Knight, she battles on regardless.

MPs on all sides say the European Court of Justice will continue to have effective jurisdiction over UK laws on things like state aid, labour conditions, environmental standards and tax. Theresa May insists it won’t, and that by 2020, a deep and meaningful future trading relationship will have been negotiated, which will make the backstop unnecessary. But that is a triumph of hope over experience. No one has yet come up with a way of ensuring frictionless trade that doesn't involve either membership of the Customs Union, or accepting many of the rules of the European Single Market. If you keep all or part of the single market you keep the ECJ.

This doesn't mean that the ECJ is involved in every negotiation. There is to be an arbitration panel to sort out everyday problems between the EU and UK. But when it comes to a dispute on EU law, the ECJ rulings are final. That is crystal clear in Article 174 of the Withdrawal Agreement which says that the ECJ “shall have jurisdiction to make such a ruling, which will be binding on the arbitration panel”.

There's nothing sinister in this – except in the eyes of paranoid europhobes. When you join a tennis club, no one complains that your rights and liberties are being removed just because you accept the rules. The real issue is whether you have any say in the making of them. Democracy demands that members of an international trading organisation should have have a share in the decision-making process. This is where the Withdrawal Agreement, indeed the whole Brexit project falls down, because as things stand, we don't. We will be rule takers.

Theresa May realised very early on that the economic cost of leaving the EU completely was just too high. She gave assurances to all those big international companies like Nissan, Siemens and Rolls Royce, who have complex, just-in-time supply chains, that she would negotiate a deal that was at least as good as the single market. She effectively promised no tariffs, border checks or regulatory issues – ie no “friction” - between Britain and the EU. She had to, or they'd have upped and left (and might still do so). Components for Vauxhall cars are said to cross and recross EU borders at least 17 times before they're finally assembled in Ellesmere Port.

But removing tariff and non-tariff barriers is precisely what the Customs Union and the European Single Market were originally created to do. The EU is first of all a free trade area, the most comprehensive in the world. When Britain decided to leave, it meant that frictions would inevitably return. Theresa May has been trying to square the circle ever since: getting the benefits of a single market without being in it.

She's achieved quite a lot, to give her credit. Under her divorce deal, Britain gets broad access in to the single market in goods without having to accept free movement. But the cost was always going to be some continued observance of the EU’s regulations, plus ECJ oversight. We've had to agree to “dynamic alignment” with EU regulations, meaning that when they change in future Britain will have to go along with the new rules.

The obvious solution might be to just join the single market, as Norway did after 1994. It is not in the EU, the Common Fisheries Policy or the Common Agricultural Policy. This is Nicola Sturgeon's preferred option, and she said last week that if Scotland even got the same deal as Northern Ireland, which is to remain largely in the ESM, she would vote for the Withdrawal Agreement. But while this Norway option has worked after a fashion, it has powerful critics. It costs quite a lot, and there have long been complaints in Oslo about “fax democracy” - that new laws are simply faxed (or now emailed) from Brussels. But hey – that's just how these things work. You are either in the EU or you aren't.

So what happens now? May's deal won't fly, yet she stands her ground. The deal will almost certainly be rejected in parliament, even though Labour don't really have a coherent alternative. Jeremy Corbyn was scathing about May’s “botched deal”, but he too wants to leave the EU. Nor do Labour wish Britain to be a formal member of the Customs Union or the European Single Market. John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, says he would renegotiate the deal to achieve a “close and collaborative” relationship with the single market. In other words, a better deal than May’s. But the German Chancellor, Angela Merkell, has made clear that negotiations are over. End of story.

READ MORE: Theresa May faces backlash from Scottish Tory MPs over Brexit plan

Faced with a disastrous no deal, and no prospect of renegotiating the Withdrawal Agreement, the opposition parties face a very hard parliamentary choice next month. Do they join with Jacob Rees Mogg and the DUP, and vote for an economic disaster which would damage the livelihoods of countless Labour voters? Or do they suck it up, back Theresa May and then blame the Tories in future for landing Britain with such a bad settlement? If they vote down May’s divorce deal, they must know that renegotiation is not now an option. Nor is a general election, because the Tories won’t vote, like turkeys, for an early Christmas. The only alternative is for the opposition parties to do what they should have done months ago: unite the Remain majority in the House of Commons to demand a delay on Article 50, and then force May to hold a repeat referendum.

If parliament can't decide what to do, the only option is to hand it back to the people who got us into this mess in the first place: the voters.