Read Matthew Parris' reports of her personality (e.g. [1]). He (a conservative journalist) says that almost everyone says she doesn't listen to anyone, speaks in soundbites, is cruel, stupid, unable to compromise and isolated.

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/theresa-may-s-bre...

But consider it from a higher-level perspective. Had she done everything perfectly (for whatever definition of "perfect"), would anything be different? The EU is the "problem" here, not the UK parliament. The UK was never going to get what they wanted - free trade with no freedom of movement, nor no border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and no border between Norther Ireland and the main island. The only deal possible is something like Norway and Switzerland have.

And the reality is, that neither Tory nor Labour MPs want to remain (because of how the political system works in the UK), either fully (in the EU), or partially (outside of the EU and subject to EU rules). So they (predictably) vote against that (only possible) deal.

Edit: This was, of course, perfectly obvious to all politicians, which is why no one wanted to deal with it.

And yet, that's not what she was negotiating. You're correct in the sense that there was never a perfect Brexit to be had but we're about a week away from the worst possible outcome. Those were never the only two options.

And a lot of the problems are of her own making. The execution of the 2017 GE was one of the worst in living memory. That was entirely her doing. She then fought against parliamentary scrutiny and lost. She then threw away most of her negotiating position.

At that point, any sensible person would realise that they're not going to get everything their own way and start preparing for getting consensus. But no, they negotiated a deal without any discussion outside of the Government (even key members of her own party) and are then surprised when it doesn't pass.

I take that back. The deal didn't just not pass. It was the worst ever Government loss in the history of one of the oldest parliaments in the world. So time to reset, take stock and change tack? No, let's keep barrelling on. Why? No idea. I mean, the fixed date, red lines etc are there to keep the harder Brexiters on side i.e. the folk that aren't even voting for the deal.

The whole strategy only made rationale sense if she had a landslide in 2017. When that didn't occur, the only sensible approach was to spend 2 years achieving a cross party consensus for something.

And just to be clear, I'm not only a natural Tory, I was delighted when she was chosen as PM as she appeared to be the sort of pragmatic technocrat that I believed the country needed at this time. Unfortunately, I now believe she is the worst PM we have had in my lifetime. And about to cause preventable harm to the country I call home. It is most saddening.

- May chose the date to leave.

- May chose the redlines.

- May chose how the Irish backstop would work.

- May chose not to work with Corbyn on leaving.

- May chose to capitulate to the ERG.

And yet somehow this is the EU's fault ?

May has made several easily predictable errors in her handling of this issue. She has steadfastly refused to shift her position in response to events, has miscalculated response to her interventions repeatedly, and has spent substantial time in the past several months publicly blaming everybody but herself for this outcome.

Her political career will be over not because she was "stuck between a rock and a hard place", but because she refused to acknowledge political and technical reality. I have literally no sympathy or respect for her behaviour or position, and I genuinely struggle to see a way in which this could have been handled less competently.

[1] hand-waving the credibility of tine travel, of course

She's been told by the rules of Parliament that she can't have another vote on the same deal. That remains to be her plan.

These sorts of situations are the very definition of what leadership is for. The fact it's nigh an impossible situation is partly due to the path she has chosen and her relative incompetence in her job.

You can feel for her and that's fine, but at the end of the day responsibility to get the job done falls to her and she has not delivered. There are no excuses.

She therefore adopted the anti-free-movement position, which condemns the UK to being outside the free trade area, and completely blows up the Ireland situation.

What "should" have happened is one of Johnson, Davis, or Gove running it. Or, after the Tory Party elected a Remain leader, she should have stayed Remain and run a GE on that basis. If people wanted Leave they would have had to vote in UKIP.

IMO, whoever was in charge, it should have been done like this: 1. Nationwide consultations about type of Brexit; 2. Determine best fit; 3. Work out negotiation objectives and fallback plans; 4. Then invoke A50.

They have suggested they would be open to alternatives when Corbyn approached them earlier this year. If a general election or new referendum had taken place, I think the EU would have granted an extension to hear what new alternative would emerge.

They are saying TM's deal is the only deal now, but that's because it was negotiated exhaustively in private already, and TM told them, essentially, she would take it to the MPs to get it rubber-stamped.

The MPs said no, it's their job, not hers, to hash out the big important compromises for the country, she should have consulted them before getting to that point and they don't like the deal she made, and they rejected it with the strongest defeat in parliamentary history.

The problem is leaving consensus building so late, so the EU spent all their negotiating efforts on TM's version of things, and they don't want to negotiate twice (unless a really good reason shows up that lines up with their principles).

Ah, that's news to me. Do you have any more info, like an article explaining the potential alternative models?

It's really the prime minister's job to build this based on working cross-party, but an obvious example might be a relatively close Norway-style relationship, which would be much more likely to receive opposition support.

I don't think anything better than the current deal is even possible

This is again just absolutely false.