UK - Written Constitution - Republic

Hey Brits,

I am curious, what do you guys think of the possiblity of one day having a written constitution for the UK?

Such a constitution would abolish any government involvement by the Royal Family, establish some sort of elected President (or whichever title you choose) as Head of Government/State, and end the principle of Parliamentary Supremacy therefore establishing the principle of limited government?

Or, do you prefer to keep it how it is with a PM, the Queen, a (mostly) unwritten/tradition/common law based constitution and Parliamentary Supremacy?

Yeah, but laws are more about what people can or can't do without the government's permission, and the constitution is more about what the government can or can't do without the people's permission.

I agree that its value would be little more than academic, but it would still be interesting to see a constitution written out.

So this is less a question of a constitution and more a question of "what if the UK became the USA?"

For what it's worth, a constitution would not neccesarily entail all of those things. Look at us here in Australia, a nice shiny modern constitution but our technical head of state lives on the other side of the planet.

I think if you're gonna have a King, you should have a real one, with real power.

Least that way he/she is trained for the job from birth. And would be better than electing some Gump type from Texas.

No. The question I am asking is the question that I asked.

Agreed. Naturally any opinion on the situation is welcome, but I am specifically asking about a constitution that does.

Fair point. Are you happy with the state of affairs or would you prefer to have a Head of State that's a little closer to home? Would you prefer some other system entirely?

When asked if they would prefer an Australian to be head of state most Australians will say yes, however in a referendum held on the issue a few years ago the majority voted against becoming a republic because the alternative systems proposed for replacing the head of state didn't seem any better than the current arrangement.

It's probably hard to understand the concept as it works here, as while it seems like the Queen has power, it's only because we let her. In reality any attempt to exercise it (except in extreme scenarios) would result in a giant :fuckoff: from us.

It mainly acts as a symbolic position, a way of reminding the politicians that no matter how high in the chain they manage to climb, they will never have complete power.

Also, the head of state in theory has the power to prevent unconstitutional moves by the government if they attempt any (although any such intervention would be extremely rare). This might seem undesirable until you remember that even in the USA you give people in the Supreme Court such powers when its members were not elected by the people.

That brings us to why plenty of Australians don't want an elected head of state...the position is seen as being one of impartiality and just being there to provide stability, bringing politics into it would just cause more headaches for everyone.

If it ain't broke.........

^^^ That's a valid point, but so is "there's always room for improvement".

Written constitutions are best - if not as sacred as some Americans would have us believe.

The time and money which woudl be spent on creating a constitution (hello EU) nowadays puts me right off. This would not be a simple, poetic and straightforward document. Mainly because the amount of shit pulled over the years with the US one shows that simple language can be manipulated just as much as complex lanaguage.

The UK has a written constitution. It's a common misconception that it doesn't. The reason being that people ignorantly assume that a constitution is one document. It is not. A constitution is the entire structure of a state, including all laws, regulations and conventions. The bulk of the UK's constitution is in fact written and it comes in the form of parlimentary statute, among other things. Yes, the royal proregative and convention still plays a reasonable part in the actual structure of the country, but there is legislation in modern times that governs how it works. Essentially most of what a document like the US contitution covers is also covered in these various pieces of UK legislation. Accordingly a "written constitution" would only really amound to a cosmetic consolidation of these laws and nothing more. I therefore agree with PGT that it would be an uncalled for and dis proportionately expensive undertaking. The apparent assumption by some Americans that their constitution is vastly superior and is somehow making their own country work for more smoothly that the UK is laughable at best.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I beg leave to doubt that our system ain't 'broke' when Tone can take major decisions without even consulting parliament, and where the only real protection for legal rights in this country lies with the European Court.
I've always argued in favour of a written constitution, the EU debacle gave me pause for thought but eventually renewed my strongest wish - abolish the European Commission, ban everyone connected with it above janitorial level from having any input in European affairs in future, and beef up the European Parliament.
Failing that - which I know isn't going to happen - there's no logical reason why we can't have a nice, simple constution of our own. No logical reason. As we aren't Vulcans, that's never going to happen, either.

We had a republic once before. Didn't last long.

There is much truth in what you say. The US Constitution defines a system that was radical and new at the time, and that still works fairly well. Unfortunately, just because it was radical and new, the pitfalls involved were not foreseen and are not covered in the document, which is why the wording is vague on some points where it would be much better if it were not. It is beyond reasaonable discussion, IMO, that the United States of today does not function in a way that is even close to what the framers of the Constitution intended. (And no, that isn't "the fault of President Bush." The damage has been going on for a long, long time. He is simply following a grand but unfortunate tradition. And he isn't nearly up to the level, as far as disregarding the clear intention of the Constitution, of FDR.)

Radical and new and based on the ideas and works of an Englishman and a Frenchman.

More the works of an Englishman than a Frenchman. Much more. John Locke fully deserves to be counted among the "Founding Fathers of the USA." That cannot be said of any Frenchman. (Benjamin Franklin, though of French origin, was American, not French.)

problem with that is definitions change, just look at the troubles with defining of 'militia', 'firearm' and 'indentured servitude' in the US constitution.

i'd like a simple US-style constituition, albeit with the terms defined and a partition between royalty and parliament.

That would be the way to do it. It would avoid the pitfalls of both the American constitution and the intended EU constitution.

err, what about Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rosseau, and Diderot?

Locke obviously but i was always led to believe (to a lesser extent) Rousseau.

But wouldn't it be nice to have a constitution with statements like "parliament shall make no law", sort of like ours says "congress shall make no law". I kind of like that.

Quite the contrary. Parliament is soverign and its actually the European Communities Act 1972 that requires us to follows our treaty obligations. Should Parliament repeal the act the UK courts would have to view European Law and non-binding and we could then ignore the authority of the European Court, irrespective of whether or not the international community took the view that we had breached international law.

Well, this is where I begin to get patronising, but if you think it's easy to have one "simple" constutition then you don't have aclue about the legal structure of our country, nor the huge and somewhat superfluous undertaken that "simple" constitution would entail. And would it reduce constitutional based litigation in the courts, both domestic and European? No a damn bit. Like PGT says, simplfying words doesn't shut off the capability to challenge.

What? That's got to be the dumbest thing I've read all year. Parliament is our legislative branch of the state you fool. If Parliament makes no law, who the fuck does?!

Which brings me onto something else I saw this morning, a sticker on the bus from a student group complaining about Iraq declaring that we should "sack parliament". I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, don't these gimps know the difference between parliament and goverment?

^i think he's on about amendment 1

which i think the UK government would be in breach of were it to be applicable in the UK

problem there is the qualifier of "peaceably". probably about equal the number of times the gov't escalates such a demonstration as the protestors themselves do going back to at least the civil war.

Except in authoritarian settings, I don't think it is possible to create a written constitution today. Both the U.S. and U.K. have probelms with their constitutions, either due to vaguness, or lack of coherence, but both are models of efficient democratic government compared to the sorts of things coming out of Europe lately.

To be fair, at the time nearly all Americans were Englishmen.