May and Sturgeon have set a wheel of fire rolling, and both will struggle to stop it | Martin Kettle

One needs a deal she can sell in Scotland; the other is being dragged towards a new referendum. For both, the odds of success are slim

In the pivotal scene of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, the heroine Tatyana writes a disastrously counterproductive love letter to the aloof hero. Mistaking Onegin’s reserve for nobility of character, Tatyana throws herself upon him. The scene that follows is one of the most touching in all of European opera.

Britain leaving the European Union, set out in a letter from Theresa May to Donald Tusk this week, can hardly be described as touching. Yet, like Pushkin’s Tatyana, Theresa May is both an optimist and an idealist. Like Tatyana, she is prone to misread evidence and to prefer hope over experience. This is true of her approach to European. It is also true of the way she is trying to shape post-Brexit Britain.

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