He is doing well because managerialism and bureaucratic language are not enough.
Plus: What would it take to get the Cabinet leavers to resign? Clarke’s Maastricht Treaty Customs Union moment. And: in defence of Robbie Gibb.
Progressive commentators and saloon-bar orators are wrong to condemn MPs for finding the national issue hard to settle.
He argues that the House faces a “clear choice”, and rejecting the Withdrawal Agreement would jeopardise any extension of Article 50.
Harmony reigned as he denied being a revolutionary.
The crude effect of his ruling, crafted and sprung on a hapless Downing Street, is to make a third meaningful vote unlikely this week, and perhaps next week too.
The precedents seem unfavourable to Brexiteer ambitions and it isn’t even obvious that it applies to UK-EU relations at all.
A number of important points about his view have been overlooked or misunderstood by some MPs and commentators.
The final paragraph of Cox’s advice notes that in some circumstances the UK could suspend or exit the backstop under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Honourable countries face up to the consequences of their actions. They don’t, like dilatory schoolboys late with their essays, simply ask for more time.
Nor could the Attorney General provide anything for his colleagues to cheer.
The EU asks: what do you want? But the Commons has said what it wants. Namely, the so-called Brady Amendment.