One way to identify Britain’s next Brexit panic is to look for a problem that was foreseen in Brussels ages ago. For example, the European commission, seeing that Theresa May’s deal was failing, decided in January that Britain would need to have European parliamentary elections if Brexit ended up being delayed into the summer. Three months later, it is the prospect of holding that ballot that has provoked May into a desperate pitch for collaboration with Labour in pursuit of some version of Brexit that stands a chance of Commons ratification.

This has been the pattern from the start. The EU anticipates problems, makes choices and waits for British politics to catch up. Even before the referendum there were warnings about the impossibility of frictionless borders outside the single market. The specific challenge that posed for Northern Ireland was identified and baked into the commission’s negotiating mandate in May 2017. But in February 2019 Dominic Raab, a man who briefly led Brexit negotiations, and fancies himself as a potential prime minister, admitted he had not read the Good Friday agreement. It is only 35 pages long.

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The prospect of Britain ending up in a customs union with the EU has been at the forefront of Brexit argument for nearly two years. On Monday around 50 Tory MPs attended a training seminar organised by colleagues on what a customs union is and how it works. At least they were curious. Breathtaking, wilful ignorance of facts has been a routine feature of the debate. Last week Boris Johnson told Telegraph readers that May should “drop the deal” and, in the next line, that she should “extend the implementation period to the end of 2021”. The implementation period is part of the deal. Drop one and you lose the other. Johnson is not stupid, but he has affected stupidity for so long that the difference no longer matters.

Play Video 3:10 Theresa May calls for short extension to article 50 – video

He is not alone in that affliction. Most MPs have grappled diligently with the task of navigating out of the quagmire, but a large minority still want to saddle up unicorns and ride back to lost terrain. They cry “WTO transition”, “Malthouse compromise”, “Brady amendment” as if these were negotiable concepts and not exotic acts in the clammy circus tent of Eurosceptic imagination.

One flying trapeze of a delusion is that a no-deal Brexit kills the Northern Irish backstop. It doesn’t. What happens in that scenario is that the EU waits a few weeks while Britain understands the stupidity of its unilateral trade disarmament. Then Brussels dictates terms for an emergency deal. Michel Barnier set out the baseline for that agreement in a speech on Tuesday: settling budget obligations, guaranteeing EU citizens’ rights and fixing the Irish border problem. The no-deal road leads back to the backstop.

May knows it, too. That once bred confidence that she would never take the final cliff-edge leap. But her time in Downing Street is running out and she currently has no legacy beyond division and indecision. The prime minister repeated on Tuesday night her determination to find some safe route out of the EU, but there are MPs who still fear she would rather be remembered as the person who delivered Brexit at any cost than be despised by the Tory faithful as the coward who had one shot at freedom and missed.

That suspicion generated plans for an emergency law demanding that May seek a longer article 50 extension. Yvette Cooper’s draft bill could, in theory, be hurried into lawusing the mechanism she devised along with Oliver Letwin to give backbench MPs control of parliament’s agenda. Whether it is necessary depends on how fruitful or sincere May’s sudden interest in pursuit of cross-party consensus proves to be. A pitch for co-sponsorship of a Brexit deal can also be read as an insurance policy, sharing out blame if everything goes wrong.

Play Video 1:00 Michel Barnier: no-deal Brexit more likely by the day - video

Even if May yields to MPs’ instructions it isn’t obvious what she can bring back from Brussels, apart from time. The EU has said that a further extension needs a purpose. The consultative programme cobbled together in a seven-hour cabinet marathon on Tuesday could meet that threshold, but only just.

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The strong preference is still for an orderly Brexit, no matter how long it takes, but there is competition from the argument that postponement solves nothing. A second Brussels priority is that the EU not be blamed if the whole process collapses. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Tuesday made it clear that no deal would be the fault of the flailing Brits and warned against allowing the European project to become “the hostage to a political crisis in the UK”. The fear in Paris is that Britain could do more damage as a dysfunctional, recalcitrant EU member state than as a humbled outsider.

Another frustration is that British politicians are incapable of telling their voters the truth about difficult trade-offs. Some officials and leaders think the value of EU partnership will only be grasped once the benefits of membership are lost and the task in hand is buying them back. Attitudes across the Channel have hardened from exasperation with May’s mishandling of Brexit but also from reassessment of the character of British politics. For years EU leaders indulged politicians playing a double game on Europe. It was normal for a prime minister to ramp up Eurosceptic rhetoric before a summit, posture behind some red lines, and then, in untelevised conclave, make the necessary compromises. That trait is not unique to Britain. All politicians have domestic audiences to woo and parties to placate.

The surprise is that Brexit has still not forced any substantial correction of lazy Euro-bashing rhetoric with facts about British interests and the way they were served by EU membership. Continental leaders thought the pragmatic diplomat they dealt with in Brussels was the real Britain and the spittle-spraying nationalist was a stock character, strutting the repertory stage. It turns out to be the other way around. Or rather, the Conservative party has strapped the grimacing mask so tightly to its face that it is no longer a mask. Those are now the distorted features we show to the world.

This is not just disorienting for our neighbours. Millions of people feel that Brexit is a kind of performance that ran out of control; a mirthless carnival that spilled out of some fevered imaginations, captured Westminster and has nothing left to demand now beyond the right to continue spreading chaos. And seeing that spectacle, the question being asked in many European capitals and in many British homes is no longer how Brexit can be resolved. It goes deeper. They ask where the country they knew before Brexit has gone.

• Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist