Chris

I don’t think they’re unendingly clever (who is), but look at the evidence in this case. The filibuster was lined up and underway. There were 102 amendments on the order paper; under Lords’ rules, enough to keep them discussing the business motion, required prior to putting the Bill to the house, until Saturday afternoon. Yet despite the preparation and the execution of it being commenced, it stopped abruptly at 1.30am, the wee small hours of Thursday morning, at least 60 hours early.

Now *something* must have changed to cause that sudden reversal. At first I assumed a date for an election had been agreed; it soon became clear that wasn’t the case. So something else then. They didn’t simply get bored, or lobbied to death, and give up. That would surely have taken at least another 24 hours. So what changed? On the basis of what Boris Johnson, and today Sajid Javid has said, it seems now that by 1.30am on Thursday morning, their lawyers were confident that they had identified a weakness in the bill as worded, and at that point their priority would have been to get the bill passed into law with as little further scrutiny as possible, so to prevent anyone else spotting and amending it.

Remember Boris has quite deliberately used phrases like “in theory” when discussing what the Bill would require a Prime Minister to do. He understands what the Bill is designed to achieve, but doesn’t think in practice that it does.

Based on what we know so far, I think we can expect to wait until after prorogation before el gov begins to indicate what its tactics are. The Bill’s supporters will have to wait, however, until Boris fails to send the letter before they can invoke the Act and ask a judge to direct him to send it. Whoever loses that hearing will appeal it to the Supreme Court and there, according to Javid’s interview with Marr this evening, the government is surprisingly confident of victory. At that point we will most likely be mere days away from Brexit day.