In his 1952 book, In Place of Fear, the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan described how as a ‘young miner in a South Wales colliery, my concern was with the one practical question: Where does power lie in this particular state of Great Britain, … [Read more...] about Andy Burnham and a Written Constitution: Is the Time Arriving?
Constitution Reform
Cracking the whip: the UK’s party control system
What to say about the UK's whipping system, apart from the fact that one of Boris Johnson's former aides has just made it the subject of what the Guardian describes as a 'Jilly Cooper-esque satire'? My research for the Constitution … [Read more...] about Cracking the whip: the UK’s party control system
More Bonaparte than Bagehot
Review of Richard Johnson and Yuan Yi Zhu, Sceptical Perspectives on the Changing Constitution of the United Kingdom (Bloomsbury, 2023) It is by now a truism that the Brexit referendum of 2016 brought constitutional issues to the fore of … [Read more...] about More Bonaparte than Bagehot
A fair comparison? Israel’s reforms and the UK
Amidst the waves of criticism of Israel’s proposed reforms to the judicial system, British constitutional scholars have had to deal with a slight sense of embarrassment. The proposals by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu have, at their … [Read more...] about A fair comparison? Israel’s reforms and the UK
Can Labour do constitutional reform again?
With the Conservatives in political difficulty, Labour doing well in the polls, but a hung parliament possible in autumn 2024, policies emerging from the opposition will be heavily scrutinized. In December 2022, Labour’s Commission on the UK’s … [Read more...] about Can Labour do constitutional reform again?
Why the proposed ‘Modern’ Bill of Rights is contradictory constitutionalism
On 22 June 2022 Dominic Raab published the Conservative Party’s long discussed Bill of Rights Bill which seeks to appeal and amend the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA). Such a move goes beyond the 2019 manifesto commitment to ‘update’ … [Read more...] about Why the proposed ‘Modern’ Bill of Rights is contradictory constitutionalism