“In like a lamb, out like a lion.” With the Brexit deadline of March 29 in doubt, the political metaphor is obvious. As well the paradox. Theresa May entered No. 10 vowing that “Brexit means Brexit.” With 4 weeks to go, her former aide, Nick Timothy, admits the government’s narrow ambit as merely “a damage limitation exercise.” The month begins with Britain poised to become a lion of independence. Will it end still a subservient lamb?

Beyond dispute, Britons have been ill-served by their political class. With an EU exit the outcome of the 2016 referendum, MPs twice in Parliament ratified this vote to leave. Was this merely a ruse? To buy time to obfuscate Brexit and conduct negotiations so ham-fisted that abandoning the people’s choice becomes the only option?

Mr. Timothy’s perspective from inside the government is suitably pessimistic. “Many ministers, and I would include Theresa in this, struggle to see any economic upside to Brexit,” he said. From this jaundiced view of British independence, “inevitably you’re not going to be prepared to take the steps that would enable you to fully realize the economic opportunities of leaving.”

Confessions of Mrs. May’s Brexit half-heartedness are no great surprise. More discouraging are Westminster rumors suggesting that Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are willing to accept the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement, unaltered, provided a legally binding amendment is attached guaranteeing termination of the Irish backstop by the end of this Parliament. (Her reputed resignation by year’s end sweetens the pot.)

Britain’s attorney-general, Geoffrey Cox, is currently negotiating this eleventh-hour “miracle” with Brussels. Advocates call it the “Cox codicil”; opponents of capitulation to Brussels, like MP Steve Baker, deride it as “Cox’s codpiece.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. May told parliamentarians that if the next vote on the withdrawal agreement (with the Cox annex, it is hoped, attached), due in two weeks, again fails, she will be amenable to ask the EU for an extension.

To ask, though, does not mean to receive, nor along present “amiable” relations, as the former UK ambassador to America, Sir Christopher Meyer, points out. “Anyone who thinks getting an Art 50 extension from the EU27 will be a simple matter needs to read yesterday’s statements from the French and Spanish,” Sir Christopher tweets. “They will seek their price, turning the UK into the Oliver Twist of international negotiations.”

If the EU agrees an extension, critics agree, along with Sir Christopher, it will be prolonged and attritional. Cynics see this as intentional: Mrs. May will then present Parliament with a choice: her deal or further EU humiliation. Odds are exhausted MPs, Leavers and Remainers alike, will surrender to what is viewed as the least worst option.

Ergo the rationale behind the decision, animating Brexiteers like Messrs. Johnson and Rees-Mogg who see Brexit vanishing before them, to grasp at any straw to keep it from flat-lining. Perhaps, as active politicians, they are owed some leeway from unaccountable scriveners.

Yet given their previously unqualified support for the campaign that no deal is preferable to kowtowing to Brussels, coupled with the fact that “WTO Brexit” has innumerable benefits outweighing any foreseeable deal with Brussels — unhindered free trade, a £39 billion settlement fee remaining in Britain’s pocket, the certainty of cutting loose from mendacious EU bureaucrats — why the about-face?

Brexit may yet “take the winds of March with beauty.” At least not go down without a fight. A people’s march will walk down the length of England in support of full exit, arriving at Parliament on Brexit day.

The erstwhile leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, Nigel Farage, is rallying the troops. “The Westminster elite are in the process of betraying the British people over Brexit,” Mr. Farage says ominously. “All of us who want Britain to be a great country once again accept that we must be prepared to stand up for what we believe in and fight for our independence.”

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Mr. MacLean, who maintains the weblog Organic Tory, writes the Sun’s Brexit Diary. Image: Drawing by Elliott Banfield, courtesy of the artist.