How about May using whatever political authority she has left to rescind?
Don't worry, I've not had a damascene conversion. I'd worry that a lifetime chance would never return, and it would seem to proof to me that this free association of states has morphed into something that it is almost impossible to leave
BUT
We've lost control of the clock.
I find it deeply troubling to have the 27 nattering on about how much time they'll give us, how they will require a pledge of good behavior from us, and how they will set up protocols for monitoring us. Expletives come to mind.
By applying the brakes
we re-establish a measure of control
we can attempt to get our collective act together even if this involves going into collective melt down together first -but an internal meltdown without external uncertainty at the same time. Maybe the big, sensible, conservative consensus re-asserts itself. Maybe VG's popular revolution occurs and the big parties collapse. Maybe something in between. But, paradoxically, by staying in for now, we get this game to play out on our own terms.
It would finish May -but she is finished anyway and this last act of self-assertion might not be a bad way to go out for her.
An election would surely follow
It would place immense pressure on the both the major political parties -but give them a chance to sharpen their profiles on the issue
For example, Boris' Tories running on a clear second tilt at leaving platform, and Labour running on a clearer remain platform
Maybe the chance to leave would disappear. I think not. We may have voted to leave in a fit of vindictive absent-mindedness, but if people didn't know about the EU then, they sure do now -and that's not all to the Remainers' benefit.
And if we do stay in, it would be as a very different Britain from before the referendum in an EU which itself is rapidly becoming very different. Mr. Nyet would have nothing on us. I do not mean to stink up the place as JRM has suggested, but we could still operate in such a way that the Commission and its friends had wished we'd left, and our friends would be delighted by our approach.
A day remains to pull a lever (see what I did there). After that, it all starts to look pretty much like living under a diktat in one form or another.