Rebuilding the Constitution

In recent years, the British constitution has been tested like never before: Brexit, Covid,
Boris, there have been many events which have pushed our settlement to its limits. Previously unquestioned precedent and norms have been set against technical and legalistic textual readings in a worrying overlap between the law and political squabbles.

A settlement which has been the distillation and culmination of 1000 years of history,
of civil wars and foreign conflicts, of plague and reformation, almost faltered, like a great
ship of state, on the rocks of a combination of narrow selfish interests and collective short
sightedness. The great statesmen of our age have struggled to meet this new challenge, this new reality: all the things which were once a fixture of the British constitutional reality have descended into uncertainty and chaos.

As the atoms in Lucretius’s de rerum natura, it seems all the old certainties have been
thrust into disparate chaos, floating about a settlement that claims to work for all but whose validity and helpfulness has been exposed to question.

Particular focus has been paid in recent years to legal challenges regarding
constitutional grey areas. From the Gina Miller cases, to legal challenges to the Scottish
Government’s recent legislation on self identification of gender, ever since Blair’s abolition
of the Law Lords and the foundation of the supreme courts, the line between politics and the law has grown ever more blurred.

Who, my friends, do you think was at the route of this evil, this miasma, which has
corrupted our once noble politics? It is with no surprise, but nevertheless a depressing
realisation, that I inform you – in the inimitable words of that stalwart of true conservatism, Peter Hitchens – that it was the ‘Blair creature’. Of the many awful innovations introduced during those dark and bleak years, it is hard to choose which is the most pernicious. The unchecked immigration which so irrevocably tore up the social contract of this country; the awful PFI initiatives which blurred the line between public and private sectors and saddled our already failing NHS with more unsustainable debt.

Yet, as awful as they are, regressive reforms to public services at least have the
mitigating circumstances of having a time-limited impact. It is for this reason that it is
possible to say, with no doubt, that those changes impacting the constitution have had the
worse effect.

As a sledgehammer to the Ming vase of our constitution, a combine harvester to the
rich meadow of our laws, the Blair constitutional reforms did untold damage. Like most ideas of the left, they were fuelled by rationalism. And yet, as with the French revolution, the smile of reason quickly turned into the deranged madness of year zero radicalism.

The first step they took was to harvest the low hanging fruit. There are few people
who could make a rational defence of the House of Lords; it is fair to say that, if you were
writing a constitution from scratch, you would not programme into it this odd collection of
peers, playboys, bishops, generals and the rest who, in the immortal words of ‘Yes, Minister’, get ‘kicked upstairs’. Yet incompetence and resistance meant that the Blair cabal were unable to totally have their way, but instead succeeded in creating a messy compromise which pleased nobody.

One of the true tragedies was the loss of the hereditary peers, or most of them. Yes, of
course there were exceptions, but by and large these people were a credit to our system of
government. Free from the ties and binds of party lines, they could be a truly independent
voice, to scrutinize the inner workings of legislation which is so often neglected by career-
minded jet-sets and to stick up for the true minority interests, which, in one of the worst flaws with democracy, are so often rail-roaded by the concerns of the vocal majority. Compare this, friends, to the dire situation which we face now. With the tragic loss of this well of expertise, the Lords is left a hallow sham, packed to its historic rafters only with those who can afford to pay their way in. This is, in no uncertain terms, corruption. And it is done in the guise of democracy.

A similar crisis of good intentions is to be found in the dreadful state of our courts.
With the establishment of the Supreme court, the Blairites sowed a wind, which those who
have had the misfortune to come after attempted to reap. But I get ahead of myself. The true source of this disaster is that famous country, the United States of America. Now, do not mistake me: there have been many good inventions from that country. But one awful
innovation is the idea of separation of powers. Again, this is something which may sound
effective on the pristine pages of Montesquieu, but which falls into disarray when put into practice.

Our constitution rejects separation of powers because it sees it for the folly it is. The
old system prioritised Parliament because it placed the power with democracy. Much of the
problem around the abortion debate in the US was the conflict between legislature and
judiciary, attempting to make what is a fundamental question of politics into one of law.

We have seen this dreadful precedent in action with the Brexit debate and R. v. Miller.
You may or may not agreed with the precedent of proroguing Parliament, but this was not and should never be a question for unelected judges, but for our elected representatives. In the storm that followed, we witnessed the awful effect, as a Government was held hostage by Parliament, with no prospect of a general election.

To conclude, there are many problems with British society. Inequality, the effects of
immigration, and the growing difficulty of providing good public services for an ageing
population are compounding existing problems of the end of industrialisation. However, we
cannot attempt to solve any of this without reform to the fundamental basics of our
constitution. In his third Georgic, Virgil painted a picture of Rome as a splendid temple set in a meadow.

I say that Britain too should be a fine ecclesiastical building, perhaps a Gothic
cathedral. Let us build it in stone, with stained glass reflecting the light and gargoyles rudely glaring at passers-by. But, my friends, how can we hope to achieve this glory, when our foundations are rotten?

Let us call upon this government to use its majority while it still can, and rebuild our
constitution.

Charlie Chadwick (The Treasurer-elect) is a third year undergraduate reading Classics at St. Anne’s.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, under licence.