What a Strange Constitution (or lack of one)

Wednesday 13th July

Britain famously doesn’t have a written Constitution.  But that isn’t quite true either; we have an awful lot of written law, it just isn’t written down in simple language which any normal citizen can access.  And it seems that this written or unwritten constitution can be changed by any party managing to gain a majority in the House of Commons to force through that change.  We used to have General Elections at the pleasure (or displeasure) of her Majesty when advised by her Prime Minister that he or she no longer had the confidence of the House, or if it was five years since the last one.  For some bizarre reason, more to do with Cameron and Clegg hanging on to their jobs than anything else, the last Coalition passed the Fixed Term Parliament Act.  This, unless under very unusual circumstances, means we will now have Elections only every five years.  No longer will losing a vote of no-confidence suffice to remove an unwanted Party or Prime Minister.  Unless of course the Government repeals this non-sensical Law we will have to wait until 2020 for our say on the recent shenanigans which have seen one Prime Minister offer a referendum, accept the result which was against his own argument and immediately declare that the wishes of the people would be obeyed.  But not by him, by his successor (who by the way has arrived on the scene rather quicker than expected) who has stated that she will take her time to do so.

There is as far as I can see no precedent for either the Referendum or accepting the result.  Parliament is supposed to be Sovereign, not a glorified Opinion Poll.  And as the result will have such long-lasting results and leaving the EU was not in any major parties Manifesto it seems bizarre that such a change can now be Government Policy without a new Election.  I accept that in all likelihood the Tories would win again with an increased majority, but we now will have the nonsense of our elected Representatives negotiating and voting on measures they patently do not believe in.  And in any case nobody is really sure what they will be, or whether if we do not agree with the terms for our leaving the EU we can refuse to accept them, or whether this will have to be ratified by either our Parliament or the other 27 countries in the EU.  An absolute mess.  And all so unnecessary, there was nothing Constitutional in calling the Referendum or in having to accept the result.  It makes you wonder whether this was the plan all along.  So much for a Constitution, written or otherwise – we are making it up as we go along.