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The PM will not miss these EU summits when they are gone, which is not very far off. In theory, there are maybe just four left for the United Kingdom.

And she was not invited out for Brexit beers in a Brussels pub.

The Brussels summit of October was not as bad as the Salzburg one last month - but that is the lowest of bars.

It was rather telling that the PM arrived at her post-PMQs news conference a little later than billed, but armed with slightly supportive quotes from Chancellor Angela Merkel and Donald Tusk.

Such rhetorical props were required after the blindsiding rejection of Chequers in Salzburg just minutes before the last such news conference.

Yet her discomfort was writ large.

The tentative dip in the toe as regards extending the transition phase was withdrawn with a statement that she does not want to extend it but might accept that a few extra months needs to be an option.

For the amount of domestic political fire it caused, it failed to unlock much in the EU negotiation. Perhaps the best thing to be said for it is that it distracted Brexiteer MPs from the failure to get progress on the negotiation and the shelving of the November summit.

There had been some more interesting concessions elsewhere, though.

In a private meeting with the PM, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, first relayed by Europe minister Helen McEntee to Sky News Tonight, it was confirmed that Mrs May acknowledged there would be no formal expiry date on the Irish backstop.

This was not denied by the PM.

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And Varadkar said of the pair: "We all recognise that it cannot be time limited in the sense that it can't have an expiry date; it only comes into force if we don't have an agreement to supersede and it only ceases to be enforced when we do have an agreement to supersede it and that's why it is intended to be temporary.

"It can't be time limited in the sense it has an expiry date."

Put the two developments together and you get a transition period extended "unless and until" an Irish border-friendly future partnership is in place.

But the PM vehemently denied that was what she had offered - or indeed, that she had offered anything at all.

So it boils down to this: we are in last chance saloon after the budget. The EU has overlooked the lack of progress until after the PM's specific political difficulties of passing a budget.

The EU needs several weeks to build up a UK-wide backstop.

In the meantime, though polite about it, the EU is set to host a "no-deal" summit and start to pass draft laws on customs and animal check preparedness. No one wants there to be no deal, but it could happen by accident.

The EU side are firmly of the view that they have all the leverage, as the clock ticks, because it is of greater financial concern for the UK than the EU27.

And yet important rebels in the Conservative Party believe not just that the compromises the PM needs to make to do a deal are betrayals, they also believe "no deal" will be welcome.

It is far more likely than optimists feel.