It's official ... as long as the EU agree. Er, have agreed.

It seems Mrs May doesn't have a great deal of confidence that Parliament will go for MV3 this week after all - hardly surprising; knowing that not only MV4 but, erm, the decision of the EC27 on Britain's future is to come. But does May already know the answer? The Electoral Commission has just published on its website guidance for parties, candidates and non-party campaigners for the 2019 European Parliament elections. You might recall Parliament decided to ask for an extension to Article 50 on 14th March - but three days previous to this, a remarkably prescient official on behalf of the Electoral Commission, Steven Huntingdon, had already authored the election guidance;

 "On 23 May 2019 voters in the United Kingdom will cast their ballot to elect 73 members of the European Parliament". It really couldn't be clearer. And there was me thinking we were due to Leave on the 29th March.

Just two quotes to finish with - the first from Rod Liddle in the Times

So long, Brexit, you bright star. You did not stand a chance

Brexit is, if not actually dead, wired up to drips in a hospice, with its relatives dropping round, one by one, to say goodbye. Our MPs have dropped even the pretence that they have any intention of respecting the democratic mandate they were charged with implementing.

Bizarrely, some Brexiteers still think no deal is not merely possible, but probable. What drugs are they on: horse tranquillisers? It will not be allowed to happen. How can they not see this, after the past two years? The best possible option is the hapless Maybot’s travesty of a Brexit. It’s that or nothing.

Next, the EU will insist upon a second referendum and we will have one. But we will not have a third referendum unless the next one fails to go the way that the EU and our establishment want. My suspicion is that if a second referendum were a simple binary choice, like the first one, and fought from the Brexiteer side simply on the issue of the need to abide by the original vote, “leave” would win handsomely. This is hardly a scientific survey, but of my scores of remainer friends, the overwhelming majority nobly attest they would vote leave simply on democratic principle.

But we won’t have a binary choice. The second referendum will be gerrymandered, as the whole process has been gerrymandered by a government, House of Commons, House of Lords, broadcast media and big business, which never wanted it and thinks the rest of us are all uneducated and stupid. Pop into the hospice and say your goodbyes. Remind the patient of that glad bright morning in June 2016 — you might bring a wry smile to its face. They were never going to let it happen. 

The second from David Starkey

The People voted 52 to 48 per cent to leave; an estimated 74 per cent of MPs voted to remain.

No representative assembly can sustain such a gulf. Either People or Parliament must give way.

And so it has proved as, in its profound lack of wisdom and in its disregard for the central thread of its own history, Parliament has decided it is the People who should change. Or, rather, be changed.

This is not the first time such a thing has happened. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Communist states were ruled by similarly pampered, out-of-touch and privileged elites who, against all the evidence, claimed to represent the People.