Just think -- this might have saved Johnson's bacon had the Queen died just a few weeks earlier. He could have declared a season of national mourning and said that all parliamentary procedures were suspended due to these extraordinary circumstances of grief and desolation. Which might have given him vital breathing space to gerrymander some arcane mechanism to remain in No. 10. Oh how he must be gnashing his teeth and kicking the cat up the arse at such bad timing .....