The Attorney General, Jeremy Wright QC, is to personally lead the Government's legal team in next month's hearing of the Article 50 litigation.

The case itself – which is to be heard by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas - is complex and its ramifications will have profound implications. There are in fact a number of linked cases, in all of which the applicants are arguing that invoking Article 50 of the Treaty for European Union requires an Act of Parliament. The House of Commons – and probably even more the House of Lords - consists largely of members who believe that leaving the EU would be disastrous. The smooth passage of the Bill, should it become necessary, would not be a foregone conclusion.

Pro-EU Tories would not attempt to block its passage entirely, but they might well seek to impose conditions for their support. They could, for example, point to the manifesto on which all Conservative MPs were elected, which awkwardly promised both to abide by the result of the referendum, and to remain within the single market: “We say: 'Yes to the Single Market. Yes to turbo-charging free-trade.'” Without another general election, the only way of keeping both pledges would be by insisting upon a form of Brexit which retained membership of the single market, something that would be anathema to the hard Brexiteers.