So what should Boris Johnson do now? Obviously the law officers are twitchy. They defer to judges and their later careers may depend on them. But as the Supreme Court judges make much of not impugning Boris’s motives before going on to savage him, he is perfectly entitled to employ the same technique.

Boris can say that the Supreme Court and Mr Speaker between them have contrived, in the name of democracy, an arrangement by which democracy cannot operate. Parliament has no confidence in the government, but refuses to vote to say so because that would provoke the election which Labour and Remainers fear. I come back to that spider’s web. Boris resembles Sam Gamgee in Shelob’s lair, and only he, armed with Frodo’s dagger Sting, can cut their way out. For Sting, read a general election.

This article is an extract from Charles Moore’s Spectator Notes, available in this week’s magazine.