Whisper it, but maybe MPs are enjoying this bit of enforced leave

As weather-watchers know, the calmest part of the hurricane is its centre – which is exactly the experience of working at the Palace of Westminster this week.

Outside, the country appears to be sinking closer to a state of anarchy, as judges decide whether the prime minister lied to the Queen and acted unlawfully when shutting down parliament for five long weeks.

My disbelieving siblings abroad are pestering for information about the basket case of a homeland they left behind years ago, believing their brother to be at the heart of the action.

Moreover, that legal battle is taking place just a hundred yards away, at the Supreme Court, but here – on the other side of Parliament Square – everything is sleepy and, well, shut down.

Most of the restaurants are closed, the normally bustling tables sit empty and people are in jeans or shorts in the bosses’ absence. It does not feel like a constitutional crisis.

Of course, MPs are outraged that they have been sent away in the longest suspension of democracy for decades – or are they?

Naturally, in their heads, many, perhaps most, of our elected representatives believe Boris Johnson has committed a gross abuse of power and that it is wrong that parliament’s doors are closed at this momentous time.

However, in their hearts… well, we’re basking in an Indian summer, they’re exhausted by three years of the tortuous Brexit battle, the party conferences loom and they genuinely relish the extra time in the constituencies they also care passionately about.

One MP told me: “I was able to attend a sports tournament that, normally, I would have missed because it was midweek, which I really enjoyed doing.

“If asked, I will of course say that it is a disgrace that we have prorogued and that we must be recalled as soon as possible, but, to be honest, I’m loving it at the moment.”

“Lord make me pure, but not yet,” the Christian theologian St Augustine is famous for saying.

In the same vein, privately, many MPs are telling themselves: “Make me unprorogued – but no need to rush.”

Yours,

Rob Merrick

Deputy political editor