JUST months to go and Brexit is turning out much as I, and I am sure many reading this, feared. It doesn’t mean Brexit. Or does it? Brexit is a new word. So it might be possible to argue, certainly by politicians, experts in contorted reasoning, that whatever is cobbled up under the name of Brexit is Brexit.

But for the more straight-thinking rest of us, yes, Mrs May’s Brexit glaringly lacks the second part of its compound formation. Where’s the exit? Nowhere. There’s precious little “taking back control”, scarcely any regained sovereignty.

The referendum, in which the largest-ever national vote delivered the biggest-ever mandate for anything, rocked the political elite to its core. But the Brexit campaign was sluggish off the blocks and has never had conviction at its heart.

There’s been no sense that it was the will of the people propelling it forward. What should have been a great cause instead became just infighting between Remainers (the majority) and Leavers within the government. The people, and their momentous vote, for which all parties should have been striving, have largely been sidelined – the usual story.

The greatest perceived champion of Brexit, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, risked emerging as a hollow man. He somehow found himself on the opposite side of the world when a key vote was taken on the Heathrow expansion he strongly opposes. Then, despite likening a key part of Mrs May’s Brexit to a “turd”, he seemed prepared to accept her entire betrayal – for so her package is.

At least Mr Johnson finally followed Brexit Secretary David Davis in making a principled departure. His branding of Mrs May’s Brexit as reducing Britain to a colony, and David Davis’s charge that her supposed “taking back control” is “illusory” are both spot on. For instance, though we would quit the detested Common Agricultural Policy, we would adopt a common rule book covering all goods, including “agri foods”. A farmer has already pointed out that if the EU bans the herbicide glyphosate, as is expected, we would be unable to import grain from outside the EU, which is where most now comes from.

Almost as a footnote Mrs May’s Brexit also includes ending “vast” annual payments to the EU. It’s an admission that, on top of our £39m divorce payment, we would continue paying into the EU budget.

It’s ironic that the only remaining hope for a proper Brexit is for the EU to reject Mrs May’s concept – as it has most previous UK proposals. She would then have no option but to walk away with no deal. There might then be just enough time for the EU and Britain to come to a sensible arrangement, preserving features deemed mutually beneficial. Two years in which these might have been agreed were wasted.

My gut feeling is that the country would rally behind a show of defiance from Mrs May. If this is Brexit’s 1940 moment we are currently waving the white flag of surrender. A possibly-all-conquering football team notwithstanding, our image now is of a weak and cowed nation. Where is the Dunkirk spirit? I suggest the Brexit-voting millions have it. Let Mrs May show it and, hopefully, we can look the world in the face again.