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Beth Rigby, deputy political editor

It was a comedy of errors: Theresa May hosting a reception in Number 10 to celebrate Conservative MEPs' redundancies from the European Parliament last month, on the very day she first asked the EU to give her a short Brexit delay to push through her deal.

But what at the time seemed like a delicious irony has now turned very sour indeed.

The prime minister is now seeking a second extension in order to avoid a no-deal on Friday - and that makes the UK's participation in those elections on 23 May now look inevitable.

You can understand why Brexiteer MPs have had a complete sense of humour failure.

There is nothing funny about participating in EU elections nearly three years after the British people voted to the leave the bloc because the prime minister can't deliver her deal.

The evening after the Conservative Party formally launched its candidate selection process, the evidence of MPs' fury was in plain slight as a whopping 177 cabinet minsters and backbenchers refused to back the prime minister's strategy to delay Brexit until 30 June.

Five cabinet ministers - including party chairman Brandon Lewis, Andrea Leadsom and Liam Fox - abstained on the government motion to ask for a delay to Brexit, while 97 voted against their PM.

Party discipline is long gone now.

"It's just another sign of how the party is fracturing and fraying," said one loyalist minister in the minutes after the vote.

Participating in the European elections could, on the face of it, make an already perilous predicament for Mrs May's dying government even worse.

"We shouldn't have these European elections, we are leaving," Andrew Rosindell, ardent Brexiteer and MP for Romford told Sky News on Tuesday night.

"I don't think we should be standing candidates. We are a party that believes in Brexit. How can we participate when we want to get out?

"The party should avoid it I don't see any point in it."

Another Conservative backbencher, Anne-Marie Morris, said she wasn't willing to campaign and even left herself open to voting for Nigel Farage's Brexit party.

And both are right in their sentiment that these elections are a tragedy waiting to unfold.

MPs mutter that the Tories will be "slaughtered" with good reason.

Activists won't come out to campaign and leaflet while Leave voters mete out their revenge.

There will be two winning parties in this pseudo EU referendum: Mr Farage's Brexit party on one end of the spectrum and the new pro-EU Change UK on the other.

A government source tells me bosses at party headquarters CCHQ did think about bowing out, but decided that it would look "childish" and unbefitting of a "serious national party of government".

But the party chairman Brandon Lewis's decision to abstain on the motion to delay Brexit until 30 June tells you all you need to know about how many senior Conservatives, trying to keep this faltering show on the road, really feel about the impending EU elections.

Of course they don't want to participate.

The party will be utterly humiliated in the EU poll, while the Brexit delay will also hurt the Tories' chances in local elections on 2 May.

What at the time seemed like a delicious irony has now turned very sour indeed

But Number 10 knows it has no option but to fight this poll - with the caveat that this can all be cancelled if Mrs May can get a deal across the line before 23 May.

A critical stipulation for Mrs May securing a Brexit extension on Wednesday will be her ability to demonstrate to EU colleagues that she is asking for a further delay to Brexit in good faith.

That means participating in EU elections and abiding by principles of "sincere co-operation" by not disrupting the function of EU institutions as part of the extension deal.

So as much as it pains her colleagues, the prime minister is putting what she believes to be the national interest (leaving the EU with a deal, whatever that takes) above the party.

Her priority in the next 24 hours is to prevent a no-deal Brexit rather than trying to stitch her fracturing party back together.

Number 10 and the cabinet know the party will be punished in the polls for it.

But Mrs May has decided that the fall-out from a no-deal Brexit risks being far worse.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Martha Kelner - Horse racing has a breath of fresh air in Bryony Frost