We are facing the biggest test of British democracy since 1939

It is almost 11 years to the minute since we reached the eye of the banking-crisis storm. And even though I was right in the middle of it, reporting on it day and night, I feel much more anxious today as I chronicle our political and constitutional crisis.

The reason is simple. However egregious the harm to our living standards of the financial shock, markets and economies always bounce, always recover, eventually. Part of the widespread collapse in trust in our leaders stems from how much our living standards suffered and the slowness of the recovery. But a kind of Newtonian law applies: what falls must bounce back.

What is threatening to fall off the wall at the moment is Humpty Dumpty: respect for and confidence in our MPs, courts and the rule of law; the capacity of our unwritten constitution to resolve an important argument about our governance without resort to coercion; the very unity of the kingdom; how this place has worked, avoiding civil war, since the civil war.