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The common law, as we know, has done a fine job of shaping and polishing a set of remedies for breach of contract over the centuries — remedies which are, broadly, agnostic to what the contract happens to say. By the time we come to ask the question that intellectual construct, after all, is broken: in tatters. Fruity expectations of a healthy, long and fecund forward relationship lie suffocated on the desiccating salted earth. The contract is an ex parrot: no longer a reliable guide to the parties’ expectations. It is the court to draw upon its centuries of analogy to put the aggrieved persons in the best shape it can.

Thus, the common law provides a framework of causation, contribution, foreseeability, proximity and determinacy of loss that it can apply to a wronged party to work out a juridical compensation for its loss of bargain.

It’s all there: that is magnificent antique furniture the laws of England bestow upon us. It seems, also, counterproductive — passive aggressive, almost — for the parties to negotiate, in detail, what should happen between them if they don’t do what they promise to do. Odd, right? Bloody-minded. Indicative of a total lack of trust, you might say.