With a week or so to go before he even arrives at the steps of No 10, Boris Johnson has already suffered his first Commons defeat. It was not even close – a majority of 41 was assembled to back Hilary Benn and Alistair Burt’s amendment to the Northern Ireland bill.

The point of this particular piece of political guerrilla warfare was to stop parliament from being suspended by a Johnson government that wanted to force through a no-deal Brexit. The constitutional experts can put their history books back on the shelf. The scheduled constitutional crisis involving the Queen has, mercifully, been cancelled.