London (CNN) Theresa May's attendance at the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday was supposed to be the final appearance of a British Prime Minister in the European club before Brexit took place next week.

But after months of wrangling with lawmakers, resulting in a failure to get her deal approved by parliament, May will instead ask her fellow EU leaders for three more months to get Brexit completed.

It is a situation that should have left May, the prime minister who took the job claiming only she could provide the fortitude and resilience to see Brexit through, feeling humbled and contrite. And yet on Wednesday night she delivered an extraordinary statement in which she tried to shake off blame for the collapse in her Brexit plans -- and pin responsibility on British lawmakers.

Appealing directly to the British public through a televised statement from Downing Street, May said she was on the side of the people versus Parliament.

"You, the public, have had enough. You are tired of the infighting, tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime," she said.

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