Brexit: Theresa May's aim to prove deal is least worst option

When does determination become delusion? Number 10's answer to that may be - not yet. There is every chance that the prime minister will again - with routes outside the normal boundaries - try to make a version of her Brexit deal the end result of all of this. Despite a third defeat, despite the embarrassment of repeated losses, don't imagine that she is ready to say a permanent farewell to the compromise deal she brokered with the EU or, straightaway, to her time in office. There is still a belief in the heart of government that there could be a way round, perhaps to include the prime minister's agreed treaty as one of the options that is subject to a series of votes that will be put in front of the Commons next week. The aspiration, strange as it sounds, for some time now has been to prove to MPs that the deal is the least worst of all the options, for time to expose the impossibilities of the new compromises some MPs seek politically for the Tory party, and for the cost of a long delay to Brexit to be too great to allow Parliament to find a new way too.