John McLean: Woe betide us when parliament's words no longer matter

As a child, I believed my grandmother simply started knitting, without an end in mind, and on each occasion an unforeseen woolen item would magically take shape.

I felt much the same when I began reading tracts of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s screeds of words. He seemed to me to be aimlessly banging away at his keyboard, invested with nothing but inchoate hope for a useful result.

But what’s Sir Geoffrey really been up to?