Now it's a counter coup offending the democrats

The Observer leads to day with a leaked story (!) about Johnson seeking legal advice about proroguing Parliament for 5 weeks. The advice apparently said it was possible unless the anti-Brexit lot sought legal action (just what they are doing -- subscribe now). The move has deeply offended 'Parliamentarians', of course:

[D Grieve said] “This memo, if correct, shows Boris Johnson’s contempt for the House of Commons. It may be possible to circumvent the clear intention of the House of Commons in this way but it shows total bad faith. Excluding the house from a national crisis that threatens the future of our country is entirely wrong.” And 'Keir Starmer, said: “Any plan to suspend parliament at this stage would be outrageous. MPs must take the earliest opportunity to thwart this plan and to stop a no-deal Brexit.”'... Any move to prorogue parliament would enrage the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, who said recently at the Edinburgh festival that parliament could stop a no-deal Brexit. The campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller has said she will spearhead an immediate legal challenge

Without a whiff of hypocrisy at all:

Pro-remain MPs have spent the summer recess planning how to block a no-deal outcome and, if necessary, force an extension to the Brexit deadline beyond 31 October, when parliament returns on 3 September....Among the options being considered are taking control of Commons business for enough time to pass legislation that would mandate the prime minister to seek another extension.
An alternative backed by some remainers is to amend Brexit-related legislation to force an extension....EU leaders will be closely monitoring the clashes in parliament in September. Brussels sources say the bloc is reluctant to make fresh concessions before MPs have had an opportunity to tie Johnson’s hands by seeking to block no deal.

Meanwhile, Irish(?) ingenuity is deployed to gloss over the problem that an Irish border would be re-introduced by the EC not the UK - -which has finally dawned on lots of people :

The blame game is upon us...Johnson wrote: “This government will not put in place infrastructure, checks or controls at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.” Few outside the UK take such a claim seriously. If the UK were to follow such a course of action, it would be in breach not only of its World Trade Organization obligation to treat all its trade partners equally but of sundry other international obligations and agreements...[but N Ireland is legally part of the UK,not a trading partner, and, everyone argues, a 'special case', but never mind]

his political intention is clear: if a hard border reappears in Ireland this will be the fault of an unreasonable EU. This is an oft-repeated refrain among Brexiters and Ireland’s tiny band of Eurosceptics, anxious to find a reason to dislike the EU...The argument gets more traction than it deserves because of a confusion about borders.

Then a lovely bit of contorted argument:

border controls are entirely normal: it is their absence that is the aberration....The only region of the world where you will find sovereign states coexisting without border checks on the trade between them is the EU....The combination of the customs union and single market remains to this day the only way that border controls on trade between sovereign states have been eliminated. It was an astonishing political achievement. It has been so successful that many Europeans now take a borderless Europe for granted 

However:

[Brexiteers argue ]that the UK will never introduce a border with Ireland; that if UK decisions lead to borders, this will be because the EU “chooses” to “reintroduce” them; that the EU, not the UK, will be to blame....

Yet:

Such claims might be valid if we lived in a world where the absence of border controls was the normal state of affairs. Since we don’t live in such a world, they are a logical nonsense and will remain so until someone finds an alternative way of eliminating border controls on trade while preventing smuggling. The latter consideration is particularly important given that we also live in a world in which legitimate traders and governments will not accept losing business and tax revenue as a result of the illegal activities of organised criminals

SO:

there are probably others who are genuinely confused. And one reason for that is that they’ve so internalised the EU’s greatest success that they assume it is the natural state of affairs...Which is wrong and also a bit ironic.