The general election of 2015 answered conclusively, to the surprise of most commentators, the question, ‘Who governs Britain?’ by yielding a single-party government with an overall majority in the House of Commons. But it did not answer two of the fundamental constitutional questions facing Britain. The first is how Britain is to be governed in an era of party fragmentation in which the electoral system, even when, as in 2015, it produces a single-party majority government, yields one enjoying just over one-third of the popular vote.
The second and even more fundamental question is – will there still be a Britain to be governed, will the United Kingdom remain in being, or has the outcome of the election in Scotland, where 56 of the 59 seats were won by the SNP, given an irreversible push to separatism.
But these are not the only constitutional questions that Britain will face. There are in addition a European Question, a Human Rights Question and an English Question. The constitution, which many politicians hoped might have been disposed of after the Scottish referendum, has returned to the political agenda with a vengeance. In the second, post-2015 General Election, edition of this pamphlet, Vernon Bogdanor addresses these issues.
This publication presents the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society, which publishes it as a contribution to debate on this important subject.