This is a fine time to be British. Indeed, to be proud to be British.

Britain is moving towards an exit from the European Union on March 29, possibly with no agreement, and thus courting – according to the Bank of England – an 8 percent drop in GDP and a 7.5 percent rise in unemployment. A drear prospect, attended by matching drear commentaries on the stupidity of the 52 percent of the British electorate who voted for Brexit in 2016.

Now is the time for all good citizens to put their elected politicians on the rack. Torture is what tyrants visited – and, often, still visit – upon real or presumed enemies among their own people. But subjecting their leaders to prolonged public humiliation has come to be a default position among democracies. None knows this better than the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Theresa May has been stomping the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to make the case that her Brexit deal with the European Union is the only way to bring a divided country together. She hopes that the public will put pressure on members of parliament to eventually back the agreement even if they reject it in their vote on Dec. 11. But the prime minister’s claim is specious. Leaving the EU on her terms will actually make it harder to bridge the deep fissures that the 2016 referendum revealed and magnified.

In the “careful what you wish for” stakes, few issues rank higher than the plan for a second referendum by those in the UK hoping for a reversal of the country’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union (the “Remainers.”) If secured, the outcome could be a fast track to a phenomenon the UK has so far avoided – the creation of a large, angry populist party, probably of the right and perhaps also of the left.

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason stood outside of the mother of parliaments on Monday morning and said he didn’t have the “foggiest idea” about where Brexit is going. Then he made what have been described as “exasperated noises” – and promptly became an online viral sensation.

The black hole that is Brexit is now exerting its gravitational pull on the UK budget. Beset by uncertainties about reaching a deal with the EU, chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond is expected to stall when he presents his plans to the House of Commons on Oct. 29 – doing as little as possible. But that will only postpone a looming confrontation with fiscal reality, which will dash Brexiter hopes and confound European fears of Britain turning into a low-tax competitor outside the EU. Instead the British state will turn more European with higher levels of tax and spending.

If Britain genuinely wanted a good last-minute Brexit deal, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt should probably not have compared the European Union to the USSR.

In scarcely more than six months Britain will leave the European Union. That departure on March 29, 2019 could be toxic and disruptive through a failure to reach a deal, hurting Britain most of all, but the EU as well. Or there could be an amicable parting of the ways. For this to happen European leaders meeting in Salzburg this week must now give some ground as the negotiations enter their final stage.

Compromise is the loveliest word in democratic politics and beyond – in lasting relationships, labor disputes, international relations. British Prime Minister Theresa May has never more needed the deployment of this lovely and necessary word than now.