The sheer weirdness of Brexit might be best described by the odd spectacle that will take place in Brussels on Wednesday evening.
The UK is the world's fifth largest economy. It is a nuclear-armed state with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. It has a world-class services industry and a population of more than 60 million people.
Malta, by contrast, is the world's 124th largest economy. It has, according to Eurostat, a population of under 500,000 people.
Yet at around 6:45 p.m. local time, Joseph Muscat, the Prime Minister of Malta, will have a greater say in the ultimate outcome of the UK's future than Theresa May, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Because Muscat, unlike May, will have a seat at the dinner table along with other EU leaders where the future of Brexit will be thrashed out.
The UK's inability to agree on a political level how it wishes to leave the EU has caused the Brexit deadline, March 29, to be missed once already. The fact that the House of Commons rejected May's Brexit deal a third time on that very day has led to the unedifying events that will follow in Brussels a little later.
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