Each pair gives you the opening line for a balanced paragraph: a Point and a Counter. Recite both halves before the next exercise.
The strongest case for IMR still operating is the modern record of personal-conduct resignations - Rudd 2018, Green 2017, Patel 2017, Fox 2011, Raab April 2023, Braverman October 2022 - all triggered by Ministerial Code breaches that the convention identified and the system enforced.
However, the departmental-failure strand of IMR has effectively atrophied - Lord Carrington 1982 remains the standard example precisely because there is almost no modern equivalent, while May, Williamson and Johnson all survived major departmental failures.
CMR depends on PM authority and collapses when authority drains away - the Truss-Kwarteng October 2022 episode saw cabinet ministers briefing openly against the PM within weeks of the mini-budget.
However, the convention reappears whenever a PM is strong enough to enforce it - Sunak sacked Braverman in November 2023 for an op-ed against the cabinet line, and Starmer's first year has seen quiet cabinet discipline restored.
Both formal suspensions of CMR (1975 EEC, 2016 EU) were limited to major constitutional referendums - the convention bent rather than broke, and routine policy unity was restored immediately afterwards.
But the 2016 suspension contributed to the leak culture that followed under Johnson and Truss - once cabinet ministers had campaigned publicly against the PM and survived, the disciplinary expectation was permanently lower.
The Ministerial Code has been strengthened repeatedly since 1992, and the creation of the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests in 2006 added a formal investigative route - the framework is more developed than it has ever been.
However, the Code is enforced at the PM's discretion - Lord Geidt resigned as Independent Adviser in 2022 over Johnson's interference, and Sunak's later use of the post was selective; the formal framework is only as strong as the PM's willingness to use it.
CMR still produces constructive resignations on principle - Robin Cook's March 2003 Iraq speech to the Commons remains the textbook case of a minister honouring the convention by leaving rather than dissenting in public.
But such resignations are now exceptional rather than standard - Clare Short delayed her 2003 resignation for two months, and the pattern across Johnson, Truss and Sunak is that ministers leak and survive rather than resign cleanly.
Boris Johnson's survival of the Met fine - the first sitting PM to be fined for breaking the law - showed how far the conventions have eroded; under earlier standards either IMR or CMR would have removed him.
However, the Sue Gray report continued to its conclusion despite political pressure, and Johnson was ultimately removed by his own party - the institutional accountability worked even when the convention did not produce immediate resignation.