In the past week it seems like a line in the sand has been drawn. The Owen Paterson affair ended in a complete u-turn by the government. While the MP could have got away with a slap on the wrist, completely changing the rules of the game to whitewash the whole affair was too much.

This made me think about where that line exists in the legal field. Time and again the government has pushed up against the boundaries of what is legally acceptable but has yet to suffer any serious consequence.

In the past we have talked about judicial review and how the changes there have been incremental and well-disguised but nonetheless hugely damaging to the integrity of the constitution. The attorney-general is supposed to be an independent voice but Boris Johnson has appointed the stooge Suella Braverman to actively attack judges who get in the way of Brexit and other government policies.

Speaking of Brexit, it is here that the government has really knocked on the door of illegality. In late 2020 the head of the Government Legal Service (Jonathan Jones) pointed out that certain aspects of the government’s plan to ride roughshod over the withdrawal agreement would breach international law. That advice was wilfully ignored and Jones felt he had to resign.

That has, to date, perhaps been the most extreme example but it is likely to become part of the regular news cycle in post-Brexit Britain. The government signed the deal in a bid to ‘get Brexit done’ and that was successful. But now that they see the legal, commercial and political mess this is causing there are constant attempts to change it. Even the COP 26 summit turned into a spat with France over fishing.

The problem is that the chief negotiator, Lord Frost, is now having to criticise a deal that only months later he was singing the praises of. Whether it is on trade, Northern Ireland or fishing, the government will continue to push against the legal rules that they themselves established. Perhaps only a little at first but when there are no consequences for that rule-breaking they will push harder.

What the government will have to learn the hard way is that when you go too far in the realm of international relations there is a bigger cost to pay than a single embarrassing u-turn.