If you were the kind of person to believe what you read on the front page of the Daily Mail (stop laughing - some people do!) then today you'd be imagining that last night Theresa May engineered some kind of extraordinary political triumph which involved both "uniting her party" and "crushing Corbyn".
The reality of the situation is that Theresa May has pathetically caved in to the most fanatical fringes of the Tory-DUP axis that she cobbled together in order to stay in power after the failure of her 2017 hubris election.
Theresa May's capitulation was so humiliating that she was forced into whipping her MPs to vote against her EU Withdrawal Agreement (by supporting the Brady Amendment) so she can use this self-inflicted defeat to go back to the EU and pathetically beg for changes to the Irish border backstop that they've already categorically ruled out.
This is the deal that Theresa May and the Tory government just spent the last two months repeatedly describing as "the best possible deal", and yet they've voted against it themselves, and this humiliating U-turn is somehow a wonderful "triumph" according to the Daily Mail!
The reason Theresa May and the Tories are behaving in this extraordinary manner is that they know that they can only get their pathetic shambles of a Brexit deal through parliament with the support of the Northern Irish DUP sectarians and the radically right-wing ERG Brextremist faction of their own party.
They've got to keep their rabble of a coalition together otherwise they'll surely be out of power for at least a generation, so that means brazenly defying the national interest by continually ceding ground to the most fanatical elements in their midst.
The farcical spectacle of Theresa May and the Tories putting their own party political interests above the interests of the nation as a whole to vote against their own damned Brexit legislation isn't even the worst part of this "triumph" either.
The worst part of it is that the Tory government is behaving in this extraordinary manner with the rest of the world watching on.
The world has seen our government agree to a deal with the EU27 only to turn around and vote to tear up what they've just agreed to.
Add in the continual Tory threat of launching a ruinous "no deal" Brexit and refusing to pay Britain's share of the EU's debts and liabilities, and it's making Britain look like an incredibly unreliable actor on the world stage.
After Brexit goes ahead the UK is already going to be in the desperate position of having to beg for trade deals with other economies that all know that we need the deals far more than they do ... but they'll also be well aware that the UK government is a bad faith actor with a track record of threatening to rip off their trading partners and deliberately tearing up diplomatic agreements they've only just signed up to.
Who on earth would sign a trade agreement with a rogue state like that?
One of the main Tory arguments in favour of Theresa May's hard line interpretation of Brexit has been the importance of being able to sign our own trade deals, but their farcical handling of the Brexit process is wrecking that very objective by portraying Britain as a hopelessly unreliable rogue state that refuses to abide by the deals it's only just signed up to.
Theresa May and the Tories are not just humiliating themselves by voting against their own damned legislation, they're also wrecking their own post-Brexit dream of 'trade deals galore' by trashing what's left of Britain's already shattered reputation on the world stage.
So how on earth is it possible for the Daily Mail to present this shambolic and humiliating Tory farce as a "triumph" for Theresa May?
The answer is that they simply can't bear to tell the truth.
They can't bear to admit to their readers that the Tory administered Brexit they've spent the last three years promoting has turned out to be a farcical and humiliating shambles.
They can't bear to admit that Theresa May is a leader without talent or authority who is being forced to dance to the tune of the most extreme elements of the Tory-DUP coalition that she cobbled together to save her own political skin in 2017.
They can't bear to admit that the British government tearing up the deals it's only just signed up to is absolutely destroying any prospects of a boom in post-Brexit trade deals.
And when the most dishonest newspaper in Britain is faced with uncomfortable truths about the failure of the political agenda they've been promoting, why would anyone expect them not to resort to outright deception?
Yes the deception is so brazen and ridiculous that nobody with any sense is going to fall for it, but Daily Mail hacks know that people with any sense are not their target audience, and they know that their readers are such a gullible bunch of idiots that they regularly take the piss out of their idiocy with cognitive dissonance inducing juxtapositions.
So they simply repackage Theresa May's latest shambolic and humiliating capitulation as a wonderful and glorious triumph and expect their idiotic readers to lap it up and believe every word of it.
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