Faint hope

 1. Theresa May is not a convinced Brexiteer. She campaigned for Remain.

2. But she was a bit lukewarm. So we can deduce a) that she does not favour Brexit, but that she is pragmatic about her support for Remain.

3. She landed in Number 10 in August or whenever it was, and her immediate action was to start repeating "Brexit means Brexit" all over the shop.

4. She didn't trigger Article 50 straight away even though she could have. She put three Brexiteers in charge of Brexit. These are both very pragmatic choices. She doesn't seem to be the world's No 1 Brexit fan.

5. And going on about "Brexit means Brexit" steadied the economy, her party and everything else for a bit. So I think she was firstly concerned not with Brexit, which is years away, but with stability. And she achieved it.

6. By the end of the summer we were all getting a bit antsy because "Brexit means Brexit" means frog all. Did she return from the recess and trigger A50? Nope.

7. So while she has successfully kept a lid, so far, on the mouth-frothing lunatics in the Tory party, she has also done nothing substantive to make Brexit happen.

8. Meanwhile, some of what she has done has created the conditions for Brexit to be stopped. She has now given a date for triggering Article 50, but she has allowed time for the view that this is reversible to gain traction. She has continued to show that she is committed to delivering what the Leavers wanted, but that includes some very ugly consequences which are likely to become very awkward. She has axed the £350m commitment giving those who promoted it nowhere to hide.

9. Lastly she was very emphatic that the Union (UK) is important to her and there's been no doubt that Brexit could splinter the Union.

10. So it's entirely conceivable that she imagines a future in which a second vote, or some other occurrence which makes Brexit obviously undesirable (such as the end of the UK, economic disaster, food price hikes, etc etc) is rejected by the public and she can say: "I did everything I could to deliver on that referendum result. This is what you asked for, and I did it. It's not my fault if you now realise that you voted for a bucket of sick and have changed your minds."