Discretion has been thrown to the winds. The ambition of Parliament to seize absolute power at the expense of the other governmental elements of the constitution – the Queen and the Executive – is now naked and unashamed. The dog’s breakfast called the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill is the ramshackle vehicle for parliamentarians’ power grab, an attempt to shred the democratic safeguards in our unwritten constitution to protect the public from just such a usurpation of authority.