Eighteen months of bluster, of “Brexit means Brexit”, of “red, white and blue Brexit”, of “no deal is better than a bad deal”. And for what? Brexit, it turns out, means whatever the EU27 want it to mean. The EU has conceded nothing meaningful; Theresa May’s stringent red lines turned out to be easily wiped away. “So much time has been devoted to the easier part of the task,” as the EU’s Donald Tusk puts it: now a year remains for the hard part.

Let’s just consider what has happened after the Tories’ pointless theatrics. The Irish border question has been neatly folded and placed into the “hopefully this will sort itself out somehow at some point” box. The DUP is sceptically frowning at the box and has publicly reserved its right to kick off again as soon as another attempt to resolve the impossible is made. Britain has agreed to pay the EU vast amounts of money, probably between £35bn and £39bn: note that David Davis previously tried to calm Tory backbench anger over a reported £40bn bill on the basis it was “made up”. The European court of justice will continue to play a key role for many years: Brexiteer journalist Isabel Oakeshott publicly worries that “Many Brexiteers will be dead before the ECJ releases its chilling grip on this country,” adding the hashtag “sellout” for good measure.

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But then there’s the absolute mother of all concessions. If no way of preventing a hard border in Ireland is discovered, then the UK “will maintain full alignment with those rules of the internal market and the customs union”. Have hardcore Brexiteers begun to process these words? As things stand, Britain is heading for long-term de facto membership of the single market and the customs union, even if we are technically in neither, in order to preserve the Northern Irish peace process. We will simply have to observe regulations that we have no power over and no say in making. Taking back control, indeed.

It’s clear what the Tories’ hard Brexiteer game is now. The major battles should all be delayed for the second phase. And that indeed is the problem. To keep this mess on the road, May has, as Philip Hammond pointed out, prevented her ministers from discussing the Brexit “end state”. Negotiations over what a final Brexit deal really looks like haven’t even begun within the British government, let alone between it and the EU. This agreement paves the way for the softest, “Brexit means Brexit in name only” deal. Will those who have made a hard Brexit their defining life mission really stomach such a proposition?

May has found a pocket of air which can be construed as breathing space. After wasted months of contrived drama, her premiership will not implode in the coming days or weeks, as some had speculated. But the real battles are still to come. May remains underwater, and the sharks are circling.

• Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist