Someone may as well have stood up in Parliament Friday and proclaimed the Brexit proceedings "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury."
In 2016, the British people voted to leave the European Union. Since, Prime Minister Theresa May's government has proven itself tragicomically incapable of selling the people on the terms of that divorce. At week's end, on the day Britain was initially scheduled to say goodbye to Europe, came a humiliating, and potentially debilitating, third rejection of the 585-page deal May and the continent had brokered.
Once, twice, three times a failure: April 12 is the drop-dead date for finding a way forward or begin breaking with dozen crucial economic and political partners without any sense of how to work together on trade, travel, immigration, the status of British subjects in EU countries and Europeans in the U.K., security, budgetary matters and more.
Without a deal, tensions could reignite along what is now an open border between British Northern Ireland and the Irish republic, which will remain in the EU.
Without a deal, the economy of one of America's closest allies could crater, dragging Europe down with it.
When Parliament voted on a wide range of options this week, it rejected every scenario _ but a second referendum garnered the most votes.
Polls show Britons, for whom the last three years have been an excruciating education, would reject Brexit if given another shot at the ballot box.
Let them vote again. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day. The last syllable of recorded European time is really coming. Snap out of it.
