This was a substantially self-made crisis. Noisy. Distracting. Ultimately pointless.

For reasons that have never been convincingly laid out, George Brandis had quite explicitly impinged on the functional separation of the Solicitor-General, expressly limiting that office's capacity to furnish legal advice unfettered by any conditional say so of a political nature.

It put the incumbent, Justin Gleeson SC, into what he believed was an untenable position.

Brandis maintained that the new restrictions were entirely legal, and that they merely reflected an intended practice that would have been the norm were it not for the growth of other habits like topsy.

Moreover, he justified the change – delivered through a parliamentary edict – as the product of consultation with Gleeson. The implication was clear: Gleeson was on board. He most assuredly was not.

It wasn't the first time Gleeson's name, or his office, had been parlayed in political debate. But it was the last straw.

To have the nation's top law officers impugning each other's character could never be allowed to continue.

As the Solicitor-General said in his resignation letter, the relationship had been "irretrievably broken". On that at least, the two men do agree.

Gleeson had weathered a sneering interrogation at the hands of a couple of Coalition bovver-boys just over a week ago, and had then been admonished further by Brandis for revealing that he had been asked to advise on the composition of the Senate.

The arcane specifics of this breakdown are matters of disagreement and will in any event elude most people. But the political take-out is an all-too familiar one: yet another controversy engulfing the Attorney-General's portfolio.

A replacement for Gleeson will be found. But it will be someone who enters the job on conditions tighter and therefore smaller than those upon which Gleeson took the office.

Even allowing for criticism each way, it was anything but a fair fight between a respected QC muzzled by his office and a brawling political QC occupying the bully pulpit.