"On Wednesday, Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom suggested the PM was gearing up to bypass legal obstacles to a no-deal Brexit by sending one letter requesting an extension and, in the same instance, submitting a second memo telling European leaders he does not want one."
How is this possible?! Years ago I remember reading in Glanville William's Learning the Law about some kid breaking the schoolroom window who was allowed to say in his defence, "In the first place, sir, the schoolroom has no window; in the second place, the schoolroom window is not broken; in the third place, if it is broken, I did not do it; in the fourth place, it was an accident."
But presumably these are like fallback positions, in real life does anyone actually encounter people taking this kind of doublethink seriously? How would a lawyer be supposed to handle a request like Johnson's?