(The deeper point to today’s antics, a point that underlies basically the entirety of UK politics, is that a single-party majority is essentially unaccountable for 5 years straight. Sometimes a crumble may fall here and there, but Hailsham’s ‘elective dictatorship’ is the norm.)

(All this hypocrisy, all this toxicity, all this continuous production of conflict is what parties and partisans learn in a winner-takes-all context, where who wins makes and unmakes the rules - and the rest is conventions and constitutional pleasantries.)

(In most other countries, there would be an ethics oversight body investigation or a parliamentary no-confidence instrument for these cases, coalition partners would demand Cummings’ head on a plate, and advocates general wouldn’t be barefaced partisans.)