Speaking from a summit meeting in Egypt this week, Theresa May told reporters that parliament would hold another vote on whether to accept her Brexit deal by March 12, seventeen days before the United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the European Union. The announcement infuriated an already deeply divided country and parliament: with little clarity, May has been acting like a friend in charge of booking a holiday who refuses to let anyone else know the details, divulging only the most meager information under extreme duress, with no one able to plan or even guess the likely schedules.

It is entirely possible she simply has no concept of linear time progression, rather than just being a terrible politician: on the plane to the summit she complained to a reporter who’d asked what she planned to do if she lost the next vote, “Why is it that people are always trying to look for the next thing after the next thing after the next thing?” Simply put, she is playing chicken: trying to terrify politicians, through a lack of detail, into voting through her withdrawal agreement by running down the clock.

Labour has repeatedly demanded she take the no-deal option, in which the UK crashes out of the EU, off the table, since it would likely cause widespread panic, disruption to food and medicine supplies, and massively complicate all borders but especially the border between the Republic of Ireland and the north of Ireland. Yesterday, with few other options available, Jeremy Corbyn announced Labour would table an amendment for a second referendum.