PM is fighting to save, not wreck, democracy – The Times, Thetimes.co.uk

Westminster always has its share of Sturm und Drang, but the chaos of the past week has been downright extraordinary. One MP compares the experience to a soap opera whose desperate writers are throwing a series of increasingly implausible plotlines at the screen. Certainly the emergence of Philip Hammond as a spunky backbench insurgent suggests a glaring disregard for convincing character development.

This is a time, in other words, of heavy metal politics – and the volume is only going up. Today alone we have another showdown in the Commons; the fallout from Amber Rudd’s dramatic resignation; talk swirling of Boris Johnson defying parliament, being dragged before the courts or even vacating No 10 rather than demand a Brexit extension.

Yet amid the clashing and…