Britain has no written constitution.
This is one of the stock statements that pundits make on British political life. And, of course, like most stock statements, it isn’t really true. The vast majority of the British constitution is in fact written down, but in disparate documents, none of which are headed ‘warning: contains constitution’.
The Act of Settlement, the Parliament Acts, the Scotland Act, the Government of Wales Act, the Bill of Rights. These are all parts of the constitution, although none are explicitly headlined as such.
A small but consistent strand of modern British politics (which surfaces again in the comments on Eddie’s post below) has been the campaign to give the UK a unified written constitution. It has been becalmed for some time now, but with the tensions brought by such issues as devolution, Lords reform and European integration, the question is once again being posed.
In this post, I want to take a brief look at what the purpose of such a constitution would be, how the UK might go about adopting one, and then throw open the debate on what it might contain.
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