The unexpected resurrection of David Cameron’s political career in the closing weeks of 2023 reopened a long-standing constitutional controversy. There is a convention that all government ministers must sit in either the Commons or the Lords, … [Read more...] about Bring on the Goats: ‘Outsider’ ministers are a good idea: their peerages are otiose
In November of 2023 I was delighted to be appointed as a Research Fellow for the Constitution Society. My work for the Society will compare the operation of constitutions in the UK and Sri Lanka. In this blog, I explore the interactions between … [Read more...] about Balancing accountability and stability: A comparison of 2022 Executive Resignations in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka
Introduction This is a blog about the constitutional issues at stake when it comes to the self-selecting memberships of political parties choosing party leaders and thus Prime Ministers.[1] As this blog is being drafted, there is some … [Read more...] about Choosing party leaders
Collective responsibility is a constitutional convention which has existed since the eighteenth century aiming to unite ministers so that they speak with one voice when facing a monarch and the public. The principles behind this convention were born … [Read more...] about The transformation of collective responsibility
The defenestration of Suella Braverman from the Home Office, after the Fareham MP wrote a wildcat Times article criticising the police’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests, has highlighted the delicate and ill-defined relationship between the … [Read more...] about The police and the constitution
In its response to the Public Administration Select Committee’s 2010 report, Goats and Tsars: Ministerial and other appointments from outside Parliament, the UK Government (led at the time by Prime Minister David Cameron) agreed with the … [Read more...] about Jobs for the boys: The exceptional Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton
On 8 September 2022 Tom Scholar was removed from his position as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. It was widely reported that the sacking of Scholar was a politically driven decision intended to rail … [Read more...] about ‘Politicisation’ of the Civil Service? The House of Lords Constitution Committee Reports
The Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) is the Government’s centre of expertise, infrastructure and major projects. It gave HS2 an ‘unachievable’ rating in its latest Annual Report, where it noted huge issues around budget, … [Read more...] about HS2 and the constitutional issues of infrastructure
Former supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption recently wrote a piece for the Spectator entitled, somewhat dramatically, "Judgment call: the case for leaving the ECHR”. In the piece, Sumption makes a series of points concerning the European Convention … [Read more...] about Case Adjourned: A response to Jonathan Sumption’s “case for leaving the ECHR”
In the first of this series of blogs I pointed out the surge of interest in, and demands for, Royal Commissions on various topics, even though they have not been used as an instrument of policy formation or constitutional reform for more than two … [Read more...] about Royal Commissions Part Three: Constitutional Reform
In many countries the independence of the central bank is a constitutional priority, explicitly laid out and safeguarded in the supreme law of the land. Kenya’s constitution, for example, declares that the central bank ‘shall not be under the … [Read more...] about The Bank and the constitution
In a previous post I started to examine the hazy world of ‘Royal Commissions’ and similar bodies. Most commentators and analysts of such bodies maintained there was not very much difference between Royal Commissions and the many similar … [Read more...] about Royal Commissions Part Two: Government by Commission
