Americans are usually schooled in some of the key words, phrases and ideas of the US constitution. Its basic principles are written down and taught to schoolchildren. Under a 2004 federal law, on every Constitution Day, American schools hold educational programmes for pupils about the ways in which their country is governed. British people don’t do any of this. We often seem uninterested and uninformed about constitutional technicalities or how our governments are supposed to work.
If you ask most people about the “British constitution” they will probably mumble something about the king and parliament, and then something vague about the UK’s constitution being unwritten. It’s actually written in many places but uncodified, although most of us haven’t an idea what that means.
There is no single tract or easily accessible group of documents that tell British people the rules about how we are governed. What the UK does have is laws, ancient precedents, traditions, a constitutional monarchy, and four parliaments or assemblies – in Westminster, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff. It’s obviously not easy to understand how this works – or doesn’t work. For most people it can sound boring. It often is. But all that may be about to change.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham, as part of his energetic start in Downing Street, is determined to shake up not just government policies but the structures under which we are governed. There’s the prospect of hugely significant constitutional change, shaking up the rules through which various parts of the UK work or fail to work together. Mr Burnham is promising new and more powerful mayors, a new political powerhouse in Manchester and a new codified model of devolution for the whole country
The reforms, he says, “will increase the case” for a – presumably written or codified – constitution because Britain is changing so rapidly. The prime minister then repeated that “it does start to point towards a new constitutional settlement” so as to bring better living standards and more economic growth “in every postcode”.
This is quite a task. It’s also a break with the British tradition that having a constitution inaccessible and incomprehensible to most citizens is somehow a good idea. The most famous analysis of the way the UK has been governed is Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution. It was published in 1867, and the fact that it’s called the “English” (not the British) constitution gives an idea how profoundly out of touch with 21st century reality it may seem.
Bagehot celebrated the idea that the English constitution should be incomprehensible. He wrote that the monarchy is at the core of our system but “its mystery is its life”, adding that “we must not let in daylight upon magic". Mr Burnham seems to suggest that much of the “magic” needs to be modernised. He points towards a totally new shape of government for England, new relationships across the UK, clearer rules about how much power Westminster may retain, how much power mayors of great English cities should have in the future, and even a different proportional voting system.
There is talk of “rewiring” the ancient British political system and perhaps – shock! – even writing down a few rules that could become a written constitutional settlement. During his time as mayor of Greater Manchester, Mr Burnham co-wrote a book with another mayor, Steve Rotherham of the Liverpool City region, to demand constitutional change. They argued for more clarity about who in Britain’s patchwork of national and local governments should be responsible for what. They wrote that “our failure fully to set out the rules for how the country should be run is one of the principal reasons why Britain is one of the most unequal major countries in the world. Our unwritten and murky constitutional arrangements have had the effect of hoarding power in a small number of hands – in Whitehall and Westminster and, by extension, in the powerful networks of institutions and vested interests that surround them”.
Those of us who have argued for years that Britain’s over-centralisation, complacency and belief that there is some “magic” in not understanding our own constitution will want to cheer Mr Burnham on. He is also the first prime minister to be congratulated by the Electoral Reform Society for wanting to change the out-of-date Westminster first-past-the-post system of voting in general elections. Its chief executive, Darren Hughes, last month wrote that “for the first time in history we have a prime minister who is openly committed to proportional representation”. Mr Burnham has also spoken of “quite an early change” in the House of Lords and he has in the past talked enthusiastically about “an elected senate”.
One caveat, however. Mr Burnham – like every prime minister – will be judged by voters mostly on whether most people feel safer and better off under his government. For many, voting systems and constitutional reforms can seem boring and irrelevant. They’re not. And if Mr Burnham lets real light into the British constitution, the historic lack of real magic might be more obvious to everyone.
