Remember, remember, the first of November

The United Kingdom is a country governed, in large part, by convention —but in the heat of the Brexit debate, those conventions are beginning to evaporate. The Speaker of the House of Commons overturned long-standing procedure to limit Theresa May’s room for manoeuvre. The opposition used a humble address to the sovereign to force the publication of the government’s full legal advice on the withdrawal agreement, though the convention is that such advice is confidential. Parliament then impinged on the executive’s crown prerogative powers by passing a law dictating how the prime minister must behave at an EU summit.

Under May, Downing Street sighed at such behaviour but grudgingly accepted it. Boris Johnson and his team have a different response. If their parliamentary opponents want to push the constitutional boundaries, then they’ll do the same. The personal motto of Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s senior adviser, is ‘with a pirate, a pirate and a half, with a gentleman, a gentleman and a half’.