What do political leaders hope to achieve by breaking with constitutional rules and conventions? As government policy becomes increasingly hard line, from talk of proroguing parliament to ignoring its laws at the risk of jail, much of the coverage has focused on the goals this may serve. Whether as part of a negotiating strategy intended to force the hand of EU partners by showing how close a no-deal Brexit could be, or as a way to weaken domestic opposition and run down the clock, constitutional transgression can be read as a way to get things done.

But breaking with norms can also be an end in itself. Rather than being about achieving specifics, it can be a way of signalling broader ideas – about the nature and authority of executive power, and about politics itself. In the name of getting a task done, leaders can seek a wider redefinition of themselves and the landscape around them.

Sometimes ostentatious norm-breaking is done by politicians who regard themselves as moderates and want to polish their credentials as technocrats. Breaking with procedural norms can be a way of aligning with the demands of technical experts and showing willingness to adhere to their recommendations. Governments instituting austerity measures have been a familiar example in contemporary Europe – in the early 2010s, governments in Greece, Italy and elsewhere passed new budget laws by decree, marginalising their legislatures in part or in whole. Picking a fight with parliaments can be a way for executives to show the depth of their commitment to a certain set of policy goals deemed responsible – a demonstration of fidelity, and thus a way to garner recognition from technocratic authorities like the European central bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The Johnson government seems to be pursuing a different kind of authority, less technocratic than charismatic, based on a show of strength and resolve. Taking on parliament becomes a way to show sovereign capacity, and ideally to show the impotence of one’s adversaries. Boris Johnson invokes a democratic rationale – challenging parliamentary sovereignty to uphold popular sovereignty – but there is something more arbitrary and personal here too: taking aim at parliamentary procedure not just to champion some notion of the people’s will but to foreground the leadership’s own volition. After all, a change in the opinion polls would probably do little to shift the government’s policy. Unconventional action here is about demonstrating the independence of the executive and its willingness to act.

The response of others in parliament can contribute to the effect. Many have expressed outrage, denouncing the subversion of democracy, but from the government’s perspective this is probably not wholly unwelcome. It has the benefit of making all voices of opposition resemble each other. Differences of principle between parties are set aside, as they find themselves articulating one and the same procedural critique. The transgressive act, by turning opponents into one chorus of unanimous condemnation, makes them look alike. As a general election looms, they are more easily defined as a single bloc of anti-Brexit opinion. Moreover, they are cast as those wedded to rules and procedures – preoccupations that may also mark them apart from sizeable sections of the wider public. Court cases intended to show the illegality of these actions fail to engage the fundamentally political questions at stake.

An opinion poll earlier this year found 54% of respondents agreeing that “Britain needs a strong ruler willing to break the rules”. There is, it would seem, a sizeable constituency for playing loose with the constitution. Even if the government’s efforts to pull out all the stops to pursue a preferred form of Brexit are frustrated – even if moves to bypass parliament achieve little in negotiating terms, or indeed do not happen – they can benefit executive power nonetheless. (Indeed, such gestures may be all the more powerful if frustrated, since they are protected from a reality test.) One way or another, they can foster a form of charismatic authority useful in a general election – one that may appeal to many would-be Brexit party voters in particular, for whom independence of action and will are arguably the very essence of authority.

‘With each new affront to constitutional convention, the Tory leadership enacts a model of politics in which the struggle for power is all.’ A sign left by a protester outside the Houses of Parliament Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Ultimately these acts and threats of executive exceptionalism seem designed to convey a much wider point too – less about the government of the day than about how our political system functions. With each new affront to constitutional convention, the Tory leadership enacts a model of politics in which the struggle for power is all. “Justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger,” as Plato has Thrasymachus say. It is as though Dominic Cummings and co want to teach the public that liberal democracy is a charade: that notions of the separation of powers, checks on the executive, procedures and standards of conduct in public life are just so much fluff, that playing dirty is how it must go. Brexit becomes the opportunity to promote a disenchanted vision – a way of resetting the public’s expectations, establishing a new normal, resigning and inuring people to things yet to come. With each new transgression, a new lesson is imparted on “how things work”, a new set of precedents established. This performative aspect explains why so much that is done seems gratuitous – including the denials of each transgression before it is announced.

Why has Brexit become the vehicle of such a vision? For many, politics in Britain and the wider EU has long been a source of suspicion. The more principled strands of leave opinion articulate this, moved by a distaste for authorities that seem always to favour the same interests, and a desire for more political agency. Charismatic exceptionalism proudly announces the style of rule that the technocratic exceptionalism we saw with the implementation of austerity goes about quietly. And with its litany of key dates and deadlines, Brexit carries the suggestion that a clean break may be possible, that a line can be drawn under the existing system. Whether the deficiencies of the status quo will be addressed in this way is naturally open to doubt. Embracing an arbitrary, personality-driven style of politics magnifies the failings of the present system without offering a credible escape from them.

The government claims to be engaged in very specific task – Britain’s exit from the European Union. Everything it does has a kind of deniability – the suggestion it is just a temporary measure, a negotiating tactic, just an instrumental means to achieve a particular goal. But arguably Brexit has become just the occasion for a breaking with norms that has its own appeal – a chance to reshape the identity of executive power, and with it our understanding of how politics works.

• Jonathan White is professor of politics at the London School of Economics. His latest book, Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union, is out with Oxford University Press in December 2019