{"id":17497,"date":"2015-06-11T06:30:53","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T05:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17497"},"modified":"2015-06-11T06:30:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T05:30:53","slug":"does-britain-need-a-written-constitution-and-if-it-does-will-it-get-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17497","title":{"rendered":"Does Britain need a written constitution and, if it does, will it get one?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have managed without one for 800 years and we are in a tiny select group of nations \u2013 including Israel and New Zealand \u2013 that does not have one. A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/europe\/after-800-years-britain-finally-asks-do-we-need-a-written-constitution\/2015\/06\/07\/6097b50c-e908-11e4-8581-633c536add4b_story.html\">article in the \u201cWashington Post\u201d<\/a> appears to suggest that the time has come for us to codify and up-date our unwritten constitution into a single agreed document.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, if you would like to understand better the British political system, you can check out my short guide <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Britishpoliticalsystem.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have managed without one for 800 years and we are in a tiny select group of nations \u2013 including Israel and New Zealand \u2013 that does not have one. A recent article in the \u201cWashington Post\u201d appears to suggest that the time has come for us to codify and up-date our unwritten constitution into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17497"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17501,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17497\/revisions\/17501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}