Killing the Bill at Second Reading would have meant no opportunity for emergency press conferences and Star Chamber findings at Committee and Report.
The odds are that the Government will win tomorrow. But it’s not hard to see how it could lose by accident.
His Bill may be held up in the Lords as he continues to insists that his Government will stop the boats. The only means of squaring the two would be an election with illegal migration centre-stage.
Making a proper job of repeal was always going to take years of work. Yet the relevant legislation wasn’t even tabled until Liz Truss became prime minister.
By stripping back the planned repeal of EU laws, she hopes to get the Bill royal assent as soon as possible, rather than see it bogged down in the House of Lords.
Eurosceptic MPs could agree that they wanted to be out of the European Union. But now Brexit is done, they are divided on what it should look like – and the ERG’s power has dimmed accordingly.
Why has the Government signed off a safeguard which Sinn Féin can disable by collapsing Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions again?
It will give cover to Conservative opponents of the deal. But the crucial question is the future of Stormont, and on that the Unionists are silent.
It’s possible that he has pulled off a political coup, begun radically to re-set the UK’s relationship with the EU – and created the circumstances in which voters may give him a second look.
It would be unwise to scupper a deal on data which would allow hands-off, targeted enforcement and free local and mainland-facing Ulster businesses from EU control.
Getting Stormont up and running for the Belfast Agreement’s anniversary in April seems to be setting the pace, but only the DUP can make that happen.
Some Tory members would see such a development as nothing less than an establishment coup: as a conspiracy of bad actors working together to win revenge for Brexit.
Recent reports that ministers may give European judges a role in Ulster ‘forever’ have stoked fears London aims to cut and run.
The ineptitude of its start has contaminated voter views of centre-right values as well as the Conservatives’ opinion poll ratings.
Separate packaging will be needed, and factories on the mainland will need to know in advance which goods are earmarked for Ulster.