Attempting to turn voters’ anger against parliament is the dangerous and despicable act of a prime minister thrashing around in her terminal desperation. Tantamount to calling for insurrection against democracy, the only saving grace of her extraordinary late-night eruption of bad temper was its futility. Unlikely to gain traction with the people, she lost yet more respect from her own MPs.

During the wait for her delayed speech, rumours grew wild. What would she do? Resign unless her deal passes? Call a general election? Call a referendum? Press the revoke button, her nuclear option? But no, none of those. Instead, she gave us just another ill-judged diatribe against parliament, achingly lacking in remorse or self-awareness.

Listening to her outburst, you heard the mood music of an angry farewell, a croaky swan song. As she nails her dead parrot of a plan to the perch again next week for yet another vote, she surely knows that battering on with her way or no way, petulantly obdurate to the last, she will be rejected yet again. Appealing over the heads of parliament to her imaginary friends among the people was sadly delusional. “I’m on your side,” she pleaded, but they are not on hers. A new poll reports that 90% see her handling of Brexit as “a national humiliation”. Successive polls have long shown that only around 12% of voters support her plan.

On her kamikaze mission, with we the people strapped on board, Donald Tusk helped propel her on her way: if parliament refuses to vote for her deal next week, that’s it, curtains, the end. Was it orchestrated? He offers a short extension but only if the Commons submits. Later, between the lines, some suggested that just possibly, if the Commons balks at this bullying, Tusk was not ruling out a long extension. Who knows? With “patience and goodwill”, as ever the Europeans are embarrassingly courteous in the face of boorish British insults: they have more urgent anxieties at gathering clouds of populism threatening upcoming elections.

On May ploughed throughout yesterday; her way or no way, the unspeakable choice. She refuses to test if parliament would coalesce around other any of the softer options she rejects. Causing an uproar, she bludgeoned them with “the House has indulged itself on the question of Europe for too long” and “must now face the consequences”.

That only spurred the Commons into the most eloquent debate in this agonising saga. It was parliament at its best. One MP after another rose in spirited indignation to demand the House hold indicative votes to find a compromise to command a majority for staying in the customs union and single market: it looks as if MPs may seize back control. She is the “roadblock”, said Ed Miliband. “Stop this madness!” said Heidi Allen. In a killer speech Dominic Grieve declared he had “never felt more ashamed to be a member of the Conservative party”. Why? Because her refusal to seek a softer option is purely to avoid splitting her cabinet and party. As Grieve said in his damning denunciation, even in crisis she still puts party before country.

You wonder why she cleaves to this abominable crew who detest and torment her: at Tuesday’s cabinet she abandoned applying for a longer extension to give time for alternatives. In caving in to the unsavoury likes of Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox and Chris Grayling, she handed power to the deranged no-dealers. Nightly on TV the thuggish Mark Francois struts the ERG’s bully-power, holding her to ransom. ERG fantasies wafted through yesterday’s debate as the bone-head Owen Paterson claimed no-deal fears were like the millennium bug panic: there would only be “a bit of disruption”, “a hiccup”.

Her historic miscalculation has been to appease these extremist infiltrators while chasing away the decent people – Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry, Nick Boles. The likes of Dominic Grieve, Ken Clarke and others soldier on, the good people she treats as rejects while she casts her lot with the bad, who rat on her all the same. The party is irreparably split already, the upcoming leadership election will sever it further; she well deserves her fate. But what next? It’s tempting to secretly want a no-deal crash to serve them right and prove them wrong. But mercifully that won’t happen: even in extremis, she won’t take us into what Grieve called the no-deal “spiral of oblivion”. She hasn’t taken leave of her senses, so let MPs call her bluff.

Imagine if she had a sudden epiphany. She would wake up and abandon her rotten party: she owes them nothing, but she does owe the country. She could call a national conclave, find a settlement outside her party, not helped, it’s true, by Jeremy Corbyn’s frivolous stomp-out from her meeting last night.

All other options are better. Call a general election to end this paralysed parliament. Better still, seize the face-saving Kyle-Wilson amendment whereby the House would nod through her plan on condition it’s put to the public vote for confirmation. Odd how those who call “the will of the people” sacred dare not ask the people if this is what they voted for. On Saturday, expect a gigantic march to demand the voters get a hearing. As for May, her time is up. The removal van is driving towards No 10, but the terrible truth is that whoever her extreme party chooses to replace her is destined to be yet worse.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist