Does Britain need a written constitution and, if it does, will it get one?
We have managed without one for 800 years and we are in a tiny select group of nations – including Israel and New Zealand – that does not have one. A recent article in the “Washington Post” appears to suggest that the time has come for us to codify and up-date our unwritten constitution into a single agreed document.
I’m not convinced that Britain needs a written constitution: although it would presumably make matters neater and clearer, it would reduce the flexibility that arguably is the genius of out current arrangements.
What I am sure of is that we are not going to get a written constitution any time soon: it is not a priority in these challenging economic times and there is just no way that we could achieve the necessary consensus.
Constitutions usually emerge from moments of historical discontinuity like a revolution or civil war or decolonisation. Since the notion of written constitutions emerged some two and a half centuries ago, Britain has never experienced such historical incidents which explains why we do not have a written constitution and will not agree to one.
Meanwhile, if you would like to understand better the British political system, you can check out my short guide here.
June 14th, 2015 at 5:07 pm
Roger – Suggest the Washington Post would benefit if you were to email the above to them 🙂
June 14th, 2015 at 6:12 pm
If we had had a written constitution would it have been so simple to deal with the issue of Scots independence once the SNP won a majority in the Scottish Parliament?
I guess not since a written UK constitution would have something in it like the Spanish constitution about the indivisible nation: The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards; it recognizes and guarantees the right to self-government of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and the solidarity among them all.
So we would have had to have a UK wide referendum to change the UK constitution to allow a Scottish referendum and the process of getting this UK change would have caused endless chaos and general ill-will.
At the end of the day it was a simple process showing the flexibility of an unwritten constitution.