Sketch: Even if Theresa May were a great orator, her trouble would still be that, on Brexit, she doesn't believe a word she says

It’s possible Theresa May will not be remembered as one of history’s great orators but it’s not entirely her fault.

Where, say, Martin Luther King, or Churchill, or Abraham Lincoln will always have that edge on her is that they were lucky enough to actually believe in the historic thing they were doing. They really, really, wanted it to happen.

Where Brexit differs from the civil rights movement or the Second World War is that, in their private moments, the people behind it did not almost certainly think it was an absolutely terrible idea.

Martin Luther King, for example, did not say: “I have a dream! That my four little children, will live the rest of their lives under the misery of segregation, but you tits want to get rid of it so we’ll just have to crack on.”

Would Churchill be so lionised had he said: “Look, if it was up to me, we wouldn’t be fighting them anywhere. Not on the beaches, not on the landing grounds, not on the hills and certainly not in the streets. But the will of the people must be respected and so, although personally I think it’s absolutely nuts, we will never surrender! We will go on to the end, whatever the cost may be. Literally, whatever the cost. Are you people even listening? Whatever the cost, ie – the cost is going to be very bloody high. Your decision. Not mine.”

It’s doubtful.

And so, at the end of Theresa May’s third “big” Brexit speech, it is with regret that I have to report that the nation’s neck hairs remained strictly in parallel with the national neck.

It did not help that it had been billed as the last in the Government’s “Road to Brexit” series, and arriving guests in the City of London had to make their way past a large “road closed” sign. They were also handed free cakes by Remain campaigners, challenged to eat them and then checked to see if they still had them.

That is a challenge, by the way, that was first issued by European Council president Donald Tusk, way back in October 2016. “To all who believe in the ‘cake philosophy’,” he said, “I propose a simple experiment. Buy a cake, eat it, and see if it is still there on the plate.”

How fitting, it turned out to be. For this speech from Theresa May marked the most significant descent from the high summit of Mount Brexit Bullshit and back to the base camp of reality that we have yet seen.

“We are leaving the single market,” she said. “Life is going to be different. In certain ways, our access to each other’s markets will be less than it is now.”

When a politician tells you life is going to be “different”, it’s probably reasonable to assume they really wanted to say “better” but decided to go with “different”.

It almost sounded a little bit like when, again in October 2016, Donald Tusk continued to say: “Brexit will be a loss for all of us. There will be no cakes on the table. For anyone. Only salt and vinegar.”

This, I suspect, will be the part that is remembered. A prime minister admitting that in the future the country will be poorer, and it will be so entirely of its own choice. It is not a reality that lends itself to great oratory, even if a great orator were on hand. (Boris Johnson had apparently been stranded in Budapest by the weather, where the international airport was not suffering any delays. In any event, there is a difference between oratory and standup.)

It also did not help that, standing in front of her now customary white backdrop, to set out “Our Future Partnership” with Europe, the words “Our Future Partnership” appeared not over Europe at all, which was obliterated by her head, but instead over Kazakhstan. An indication, perhaps, of where UK trade policy is headed. Yekshemesh!

The Prime Minister again insisted “there will be no hard border in Ireland”, even if there still exists no way in which this can be achieved while one side is in the customs union and the single market and the other isn’t. It is an insistence she is highly likely to go on making, long after the hard border has been built.

She had the temerity to talk of what will be remembered of Brexit “a generation from now”. Here’s a prediction: a generation from now, the current young generation, who utterly loathe Brexit, will remember the monumental pain in the arse that was taking the UK back into the EU under worse terms, some time around 2031 at the very latest. But we shall see.

There was, however, some good news for the Prime Minister. “The world is watching,” she claimed, with as much gravity as she can muster. If, by “the world” she meant Donald Trump, with whom a future free trade deal still remains the ultimate and most crucial prize of Brexit, well don’t worry Prime Minister. He definitely wasn’t watching. He was firing out tweets about how “great” and “easy to win” international trade wars are, placing protectionist tariffs on steel and hammering the global economy as he did so.

She rounded things off with her favourite catch phrase, “Let’s get on with it!”

That by “it” she meant, stating the blindingly obvious, that everyone on the EU side has been saying for almost two years. But there’s still six months of meaningful negotiating time left, and I for one don’t think a single second of it will go to waste.

I have a dream! It really wasn’t meant to turn out like this.