The great cartoonist William Heath Robinson lived in Pinner and we have a museum here housing his work, which specialised in ludicrously complicated contraptions. The October page of this year’s museum calendar shows a man trying to cross a chasm between two cliffs by stringing together car tyres and old clothes and using his umbrella as a grappling hook. I will not, however, need to come home to witness such absurdity. All the Heath Robinson-style mechanisms I could ever want will be available for me in Westminster.

In the last few weeks, as it dawns that the government is serious about no-deal, all sorts of unconvincing plans to stop them have been canvassed. Of which my favourite is the “national unity government”.

The idea