T HE GOVERNMENT has discovered an ingenious method of not losing votes: don’t hold them. Earlier this month Theresa May’s unpopular Brexit deal faced certain defeat in the House of Commons. Instead, the government pulled it. To postpone the vote it ought really to have sought Parliament’s permission—at least, that would have been “in democratic terms, the infinitely preferable way…in any courteous, respectful and mature environment,” according to John Bercow, the speaker of the House. But the government decided not to bother, using a sneaky procedural method to go over MP s’ heads.

Britain’s ramshackle constitution allows plenty of scope for such shenanigans. Whereas every other Western democracy has codified its system of government, Britain’s constitution is a mish-mash of laws and conventions, customs and courtesies. Britain sees no need for the legalistic or (worse) European idea of writing down its constitution in one place. Instead it relies on the notion that its politicians know where the unwritten lines of the constitution lie, and do not cross them. “The British constitution is a state of mind,” says Peter Hennessy, a historian who calls this the “good chap” theory of government. “It requires a sense of restraint all round to make it work.” Yet amid Britain’s current crisis, such restraint has been lacking.

In 2018 the good-chap principle has taken a battering. Gaming the rules has become the only way for the Conservative government, which lacks an effective majority in the Commons, to cling on. Brexit has strained the hardware of Britain’s constitution, such as the civil service and the courts. But the software—the norms that govern day-to-day politics—has been infected with a virus, too. The chaps in government are less inclined to be good.

One reason is desperation. Last year, for the first time since 1974, a general election spat out a government without a majority (the Tories rule only with the conditional support of the Democratic Unionist Party’s ten MP s). Every vote is a dogfight. “Pairing” arrangements—when MP s from opposing parties promise to sit out a vote if their opposite number can’t make it—nearly fell apart this summer after a Tory MP voted even though his Lib Dem “pair” was on maternity leave. A similar breakdown of trust in the 1970s saw near-dead MP s wheeled from hospital through the division lobbies.

When votes cannot be won they are sometimes being ignored. If the government looks likely to lose an “opposition day debate”, which has no binding effect but expresses the will of Parliament, it has taken to boycotting the motion. Thus in 2017 it ignored a vote to pause the roll-out of universal credit, a big welfare shake-up. Earlier this month Parliament voted to find the government in contempt, after it refused to publish legal advice on its Brexit deal. The latest row is over whether a motion of no confidence in Mrs May, tabled by the opposition, should be merely symbolic (as Labour intended) or a binding verdict on the government (as the Tories insist).

The prime minister’s weakness has allowed cabinet ministers to ignore informal codes of conduct. In July the then work and pensions secretary, Esther McVey, was found to have misled Parliament over universal credit, but did not resign. The principle of collective cabinet responsibility is also being stretched. Ministers happily improvise on government business in public, floating the idea of holding a second Brexit referendum, say.

The personalities of today’s leaders have contributed to the erosion of political norms. Though she is a stickler for rules, Mrs May has become politically unembarrassable. In 2017 she stayed in post despite losing her majority in an election that was considered unlosable. This month she clung on after winning a confidence vote in which 117 of her own MP s voted against her. Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, is perhaps more shameless still: in 2016 he refused to budge even after losing a confidence vote among his MP s, on the basis that under Labour’s rules the members pick the leader.

The disregarding of political conventions might matter less than before, given that British governments face more formal constraints than they used to. During the upheaval of the 1990s and early 2000s, parts of the constitution shifted from misty precedent into law. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland won new constitutional settlements. The Human Rights Act and the EU’ s Charter of Fundamental Rights laid out clear freedoms. The Cabinet Manual, which provides guidelines on matters such as when ministers should step down, came out in 2011. The chaps in office can get away with less than in the past.

But Brexit is sending this trend into reverse. Britain is swapping its “protected” constitution, which gives citizens recourse to a higher legal power, for an unprotected one, points out Vernon Bogdanor of King’s College, London. Brexit removes things like the EU’ s Charter of Fundamental Rights from Britain’s constitution. And embedded in Brexit legislation are plans to give ministers sweeping “Henry VIII” powers to shape the law in areas that were previously handled by the EU. What’s more, some other newish laws increase the scope for prime ministerial misbehaviour. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011 tore up long-established principles about what constituted a confidence vote in the government. Under the act, a shameless prime minister could conceivably try to cling on even after losing such a vote.