It’s a grim little task, but I’ve been thinking some more about British Prime Minister Theresa May’s vacuous and ill-considered ‘big speech’ about Brexit yesterday, and specifically its political implications. Best guess: her damp squib will blow up in the Tories’ faces. Explosives geeks, spare me your pedantry.

To recap, May has walked away from the relatively easy ‘out’ offered by the ‘Norway option’ (leaving the EU, but remaining in the EEA – the Single Market). What she wants instead is a bespoke arrangement of a type that the EU is unlikely to agree to unless it is very much in the EU’s favor. Showing some realism in one respect at least, May has conceded that a bespoke solution will not be able to be put in place overnight, so she is also asking for a two year transition period, during which the UK will (de facto, if not de jure) remain in the EU.

One of the lessons of Britain’s last election (badly bungled by May and a small cabal of advisors), is that Theresa May is incapable of fighting another. Another is that the political impact of Brexit was not as expected. The Tories did gain some blue collar constituencies, but that benefit was outweighed by the support they lost in the more affluent south of England, where there were enough Conservative or Conservative-leaning voters outraged by Brexit to vote for someone else and thus put an end to the Tories’ parliamentary majority.

By trying for a bespoke deal, May has ensured that the debate over Brexit, possibly the most divisive that I have ever seen in the UK, will continue to roil the Tory party and will, quite likely, lead to a long series of close-run votes in parliament (the Conservative government is, of course, now a minority government). Should the government fall, the best guess is either that it would be replaced by a minority government of the left or that there would be a fresh election. Should that take place, the Labour Party (headed by the far left Jeremy Corbyn) would likely win it, in alliance, presumably, with the Scottish Nationalists.

Now, imagine you are running a business either in the UK or abroad. At the moment, you don’t know what the UK’s relationship with its largest trading partner (the EU) will be. You do know there is a reasonable chance that Corbyn’s Labour will be running the country before too long. Under those circumstances, you might be somewhat less willing to invest in the UK. In fact, you might prefer to invest elsewhere, whether to lock in access to the Single Market, dodge Corbyn or both. If enough businesses feel the same way that increases the chance that the economy will falter. If the economy falters, that increases the likelihood that Corbyn, enjoying the luxury of opposition, will prevail. Such an improvement in Labour’s prospects will deter yet more investment, and so the vicious circle turns.

Negotiating an acceptable bespoke deal will not, to put it mildly, be straightforward. May may well face a choice between accepting a humiliating Brussels diktat or presiding over a British ‘crash’ out of the EU, a crash that is unlikely to proceed very prettily. Neither alternative is a natural election winner for the Tories.

Let’s try optimism for once and assume for a moment that May is able to cut a reasonably decent deal with the EU and that the deal is acceptable to parliament. The transition period starts in 2019 as planned and the UK’s ‘final final’ departure from the EU is in 2021. That’s just a year before the next election is due, too short a time, I suspect, for a certain percentage of Tory Remainers to forgive, forget and return to the fold. Meanwhile, with Brexit in the bag, blue collar euroskeptics in the Labour heartlands will return to Corbyn’s fold. The transient boost that Brexit gave the Tories in those seats will be lost, but Brexit’s political cost (or some of it) will, so to speak, remain.

Five years is, of course, a long time in politics. There’s plenty that could change between now and then (a Labour split, perhaps, although I doubt it), but it’s hard not to think that, by choosing the type of Brexit that she has, Theresa May, queen of the own goal, has done it again.

And for what?