The first political thought I remember being taught at school was that Britain was a cut above the rest because we didn’t need a written constitution. Lesser peoples, who regularly found themselves in thrall to demagogues of left or right, might need parchment-penned protection from tyranny, but we in Britain could rest assured that our freedoms were firmly established by tradition. Nothing could deprive a free-born Briton of his or her ancient liberties as handed down from generation to generation. The onion layers of common law, Magna Carta, habeas corpus, the rule of law, trial by jury, the Bill of Rights, the secret ballot and universal suffrage amounted to far more than a single written document could ever deliver. And unlike other countries, where the constitution simply snapped under pressure, our political system could bend with the wind of political change.
That’s the rather romantic theory. We stand on the shoulders of constitutional giants. Our freedoms are secure. There’s just one flaw. Our system delivers phenomenal power into the hands of the government of the day, which is constituted solely by virtue of its majority in the Commons. That means that if it neuters the Lords it can always get its way in the Commons; and it is only a self-denying ordinance that stays the government’s hand from tearing up the rules and rewriting them in its own interests.
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