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For well over a decade British political leaders have expended enormous amounts of energy trying to divine the thoughts of Angela Merkel.

Britain has calculated that it is worth making a special effort with the German chancellor on the grounds that she leads the pre-eminent power in Europe.

Throw in a classic German instinct about the need to temper French protectionism, goes the thinking, and Britain has a friend.

David Cameron can testify, however, that the Merkel calculation has produced mixed results after she rejected his idea of an emergency hand brake to limit EU migration.

Even with this varied track record, British political leaders have once again assumed that Merkel would help out. Iain Duncan Smith told me on Newsnight recently that "Mutti" would deliver in the Brexit negotiations.

There are some encouraging signals from Berlin. Last week the German chancellor moved to repair the damage after the Salzburg summit when she spoke of how she hopes Brexit can be negotiated in a "friendly way" to keep the UK as close as possible to the EU.

But Angela Merkel did also question a central element of the prime minister's Chequers plan when she told German business that an outside country cannot join only one part of the single market. Theresa May wants to follow a common rule book for goods and agri-products while opting out of the free movement of people and the single market on services.

Amid this background senior members of the cabinet are now reaching a settled view about Merkel: she is highly unlikely to come riding to the rescue over Brexit.

They believe that, at best, she is now so weak domestically she is unable to make any bold moves. At worst Merkel is such a stickler for EU rules she will not allow any compromises on the core principles of the EU for a "third country", a non member.

Ministers now believe that the UK is entering the Brexit endgame with a potentially dangerous power play at the heart of the EU. The fear is that Emmanuel Macron is now the foremost EU leader with a difference: the French president is politically unrestrained by the German chancellor.

One senior cabinet minister told me that, for all his talk during his trip to Britain of forging a bespoke deal for the UK, Macron has spotted a chance to advance French interests. Macron also has an interest in making Brexit look painful as he seeks to cast himself as the only European leader capable of defeating populism.

Macron regards Brexit as the British version of populism surging across Europe. In his eyes he is the only mainstream leader to have defeated a populist candidate in a presidential election. And on the anniversary of his Sorbonne speech, in which he diagnosed the problem and set out his vision to combat populism, he wants to ensure there can be no rewards for those offering what he calls simple solutions.

One weary cabinet member told me: "The EU has a real problem if they dismiss Brexit as populism. It means they will never understand what is going on in their own countries."

So Britain enters the final phase of the negotiations with a French president keen to use Brexit to show what he regards as the folly of governing through easy rhetoric. In the background stands a German chancellor who has reportedly been heard to mutter that Britain must be made to suffer a bit to show you cannot leave the club and keep all the benefits.

Theresa May will be hoping to limit the suffering to "a bit". Brexiteers will say: seize your chance to break free from leaders who fail to understand the newly emerging world around them.