I feel as if I'm watching a massive irrelevance while the nation shunts itself into a siding and waits for the rails to rust. I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's grubby political expediency, random acts of idiocy and Macmillan's dreaded 'events, dear boy, events' which will mould Brexit, rather than this court case.
For all the forensic top-gunnery going on here, we're at a seaside Punch and Judy show with freak waves threatening to engulf us.
In an overspill courtroom, watching the proceedings on closed-circuit TV, it's like looking at a box of insects through the wrong end of a telescope. If you get into the public gallery in the rafters of Court 4, you are dazzled by the elaborate light fittings. Drawing is illegal.
Below, you can see the bench, a confetti of highlighters in front of the Master of the Rolls, and a row of court staff, but in this classic piece of Victorian court design you - the public - can't see anyone else, and that's deliberate. If the speakers mumble you can't hear them too well as the miking is not aimed at you. To compensate, a transcript is available as soon as the session is over.
On the way here I passed the National Gallery, King's College and the LSE, all royally shafted by Brexit. 'It is perhaps unsurprising that it was Henry IV who wanted to kill all of the lawyers,' says counsel ambitiously, although 'Let's kill all the lawyers' is uttered by Dick the Butcher in Henry VI Part II.
The Attorney-General stands up. The 60-odd people in the public gallery become watchful as cats. Even though we can't see him. A pregnant woman strokes her bump reassuringly. The Master of the Rolls removes his wig for a couple of seconds and scratches his head. Don't we all.
Now James Eadie QC: 'The prerogative, it has often been said, is the residue of powers left in the hands of the Crown. We submit that words need to be added to the end of that description of the prerogative and the correct and true principle is that the prerogative is the residue of powers left in the hands of the Crown by Parliament.'
We had a civil war to sort out this kind of stuff. Seems like yesterday. Or tomorrow. Parties and lawyers on the claimant side have received threats of violence.
Mr Eadie describes the argument between him (for the Government) and Lord Pannick: 'There is an element of two ships passing in the night because we both assert a constitutional assumption upon which Parliament has legislated.' Is one of them a rescue ship? Will it see us?
Now James Eadie QC: 'The prerogative, it has often been said, is the residue of powers left in the hands of the Crown. We submit that words need to be added to the end of that description of the prerogative and the correct and true principle is that the prerogative is the residue of powers left in the hands of the Crown by Parliament.'
We had a civil war to sort out this kind of stuff. Seems like yesterday. Or tomorrow. Parties and lawyers on the claimant side have received threats of violence.
Mr Eadie describes the argument between him (for the Government) and Lord Pannick: 'There is an element of two ships passing in the night because we both assert a constitutional assumption upon which Parliament has legislated.' Is one of them a rescue ship? Will it see us?
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