The Brexiters' rearguard defence against Article 50 extension has fallen apart

This defeat was not just lost on the floor of the Commons. It was the result of years of party mismanagement, of a tin-eared prime minister refusing to listen to moderate voices in her government or her party benches, leading key figures to drop out, one by one, over the course of this whole sorry, dreary saga. It was made up of several individual stories of political disenchantment. If any one of them had not happened, yesterday's vote would have failed. It is like a morality tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted political calculations.