At the start of this week, Gavin Williamson wrote in the Mail on Sunday that the cross-party Brexit talks were destined to fail and could only end in tears.

After reports that Theresa May had tears in her eyes during her showdown with the 1922 executive, perhaps Mr Williamson’s prediction has been proved correct.

After all, it has been hardly a week of shock news in politics: Boris Johnson has announced he’s going to run for the Tory leadership and now the Brexit talks have collapsed.

In other news, the Pope is a Catholic and bears have been spotted in the woods.

Despite a lot of platitudes from both sides about the discussions being “constructive and serious”, these talks were never going to end the Brexit deadlock.

The only surprise is that they were kept going for so long, more than six weeks, although there was a fairly lengthy pause during parliament’s Easter recess.

Now, in spite of the inevitability of the negotiations collapsing, party politics being what it is, both sides are blaming each other for the breakdown.

:: What happens now cross-party talks have failed?

Jeremy Corbyn says it’s the government’s fault because the turmoil in the Tory party means Theresa May’s successor would almost certainly tear up any deal.

The prime minister says it’s Labour’s fault because Mr Corbyn’s party is split on a second referendum. Both are true. But the talks have been limping towards collapse for weeks.

This has been the week when the inevitable became reality. First, both sides made demands the other was never going to accept.

And second, the firing of the starting gun for the battle for the Tory succession was the killer blow that forced Mr Corbyn to tell the PM it wasn’t worth wasting any more time.

After Mr Williamson’s attempt – successful, as it has turned out – to sabotage the talks, the shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer raised the stakes.

He said in a Guardian interview that there could be no deal without a government promise of a second referendum. But ministers were never going to agree to that.

Then on Monday, on the eve of this week’s marathon Cabinet meeting, 13 senior Tories – including several former Cabinet ministers – turned up the heat on the PM.

Not only did the grandees – including Boris Johnson – insist on no climbdown on a customs union, the key Labour demand, but they also said any deal should not be binding on her successor.

It’s that second demand that has really killed off the talks: the threat that Mr Johnson or another Brexiteer prime minister would simply rip up any deal after Labour had voted for it in the House of Commons.

As John McDonnell colourfully put it at a Wall Street Journal event this week: “If we are going to march our troops in parliament to the top of the hill to vote for a deal, and then that’s overturned within weeks, I think that would be a cataclysmic act of bad faith.”

There was a strong expectation among MPs that the Cabinet would axe the talks on Tuesday.

But instead, the PM met Mr Corbyn and told him she was going to gamble on bringing the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to the Commons early next month. Good luck with that, prime minister.

David Lidington, speaking at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland, where the British Open is being played this year, has struck a more conciliatory note than the PM, urging Labour to vote for the bill and even suggesting the cross-party talks could resume.

Really? His optimism is surely that of an 18-handicap golfer who thinks he can reach the green from a deep fairway bunker with a giant tree in the way.

Perhaps the bunkered Mr Lidington should heed the advice of the DUP’s Arlene Foster – who has invited Donald Trump to the Open – and says the talks were always doomed to failure.

It was Gavin Williamson, let’s not forget, who brokered the deal with the DUP after the 2017 election. No wonder the former defence secretary agrees with Arlene Foster.

But they’re both right about the talks, however. They have indeed been a waste of time and were destined to fail… and, as it has turned out, end in tears.

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