Referendum problems

Okay let's get the easy one out of the way first. The plural is "referendums". Not ~a. I won't take up this post with the rationale (but see the very end for a bit).

The more complicated problems stem from their haphazard use in this country, with the result that we now have a mixture of precedents and popular decisions. Exactly what has been rejected beyond the specific measure on the ballot paper is often disputed and that brings up the question of what would be ignoring the will of the people or subjecting them to a neverendum until they "get it right". And some of these decisions covered only specific nations, regions or cities so are they binding on the rest?

In general a referendum is assumed to settle a political question for some period longer than a single parliament or council term. Of course one can find examples internationally of the same question being brought back almost immediately and rather more cases of losing sides declining to give up the cause. And there are countries where the political culture is such that a second referendum is actually expected if the measure is initially defeated, allowing the first vote to be used as a chance to protest some of the detail rather than an outright rejection. Legislation (and constitutions) only sometimes addresses this matter. More usually it's left to political will.

(In another post I'll detail what we have and haven't voted for on constitutional matters over the years and ask just how far that stretches.)

And if a referendum is going to formally settle a matter for a long time then there's the question of just what should be an acceptable threshold for enacting a change. It's fashionable to decry super majorities. turnout thresholds, total electorate requirements and multiple sectional consents as undemocratic, but is democracy really served well by measures passing on tiny turnouts? With some referendums and elections attracting turnouts in the teens or below, the prospect of just 5% of an electorate deciding a matter is not unrealistic. Is that really "democratic"?

The UK's mixed history of using referendums has thrown up a lot of anomalies. We've had them for a number of differing reasons including:

• A desire to transfer the decision making to a local level to get out of the issue altogether.
• A way for a national government to duck a divisive issue that splits the party or parties.
• A way for a government to lock in constitutional change by getting a direct mandate from the people, making it harder for a different party to undo in government.
• A way for opponents of a measure to put a populist roadblock in the way of a change.
• A way to demonstrate to the international community that the constitutional situation has popular support.
• The broad principle that a change in the distribution of political power should be decided by the people not by the politicians.

The last one is often appealed in calls for referendums but is rarely the reason we actually get them - whether we have a vote or not is decided by politicians in the first place.

Because of these varying reasons the thresholds for referendums to pass have also varied. In general if the prospective "Yes"/"Change" campaign is in control of setting the rules then all that's needed is 50%+1 of any turnout whatsoever. When the rules are controlled by the less enthusiastic or opponents then additional thresholds can come up. The old Scottish local prohibition referendums had complex requirements of super majorities and minimum support amongst the total electorate in order to enact prohibition. More notoriously the 1979 devolution referendums required a minimum of 40% of the total electorate to vote yes for the measure to pass. It's a surprise that council tax increase referendums do not come with any special threshold.

Because most recent referendums have had no additional thresholds it may be hard to consider them now. (That said I note the SNP are now calling for an EU withdrawal referendum to pass in all four parts of the UK to be valid.) But with turnouts in serious decline and ever more calls for public votes that could mean more stuff passing over the heads of the population. Even publicity is not a given. The myth of the obsessed citizen who always knows which noticeboard to consult and who is always aware of every vote and planning measure going is not one that matches the reality.

And in this great wave of calls to think again about how we do things, why should we be bound by past precedents? We should be able to consider this one carefully in a way that can empower the electorate without forcing them to have to turnout all the time to block measures they don't care for.

But there is a major problem that can't easily be overcome and that's different results in different areas. Can individual nations and regions rewrite the make-up of the UK without reference to others? An individual city may not want a Mayor but should it have a say in whether or not its rivals can get an advantage from a champion. Can only some parts of England have devolution or will it be an all or nothing offer?

All questions to ponder...

(So why is it "referendums" not ~a? The only necessary answer is very simple - loan-words absorbed into the English language take English language rules and people do not need to be familiar with the origin of a word and the rules of the original language in order to use it. We do not talk of "apparatchiki" or "octopodes" or "kindergärten". There is no good reason for making an exception for Latin.

And although it's irrelevant to the plural, those who argue for the original Latin usually get it wrong anyway. Latin has lot of "cases" and "declensions" and other terms that hardly anyone can remember and which even my spell check doesn't recognise, meaning the word has different endings depending on the circumstances. But the advocates for "Latin plurals" put forward a single plural in all circumstances. That's bad Latin even before it gets to English.

Turning back to "referendum", this doesn't even have a plural in Latin. The word means "referring". Using ~a would mean a multi-issue referendum, but almost nobody uses the word in such a narrow context.)

Gough Whitlam 1916-2014

Gough Whitlam is probably the most intensely studied of all Australian Prime Ministers, not just in his home country but around the world. In just three years he brought sweeping changes to Australia, whether in education, health, foreign affairs, relations with indigenous Australians, the government of the Northern Territory and so much more. Even the Queen's title was changed to be more Australian.

It is in constitutional affairs that Whitlam attracts much global attention. Literally from its very first moment to its very last his government saw precedents broken and argument ensued. Rather than wait the customary period to assemble a full ministry and take office, he instead had himself and his deputy sworn into no less than twenty-seven different posts just a few days after winning the 1972 election in order to hit the ground running and immediately start implementing the government's agenda. Over the next few years more precedents would be broken and the two sides of Australian politics would fiercely argue over what practices were fundamental constitutional conventions and which were optional agreements to be set aside as and when.

Throughout its three year life the Whitlam government struggled with a hostile majority in the Senate. More legislation was blocked in three years than in the entire preceding seventy-two years of the Australian federation. Not even a "double dissolution" - a full election of all seats in both houses - resolved the gridlock beyond a few individual bills being passed (though they included the introduction of universal health care). How casual Senate vacancies were filled became another battleground with both sides crying foul about particular vacancies in Queensland. And then the Senate obstructed Supply, leading to Whitlam's dramatic dismissal by the Governor General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975. (The above picture is of Kerr's Private Secretary, David Smith, reading out the proclamation of the dissolution of Parliament in less than ideal circumstances with Whitlam literally glaring over his shoulder.)

Beyond the personalities and the use of the reserve powers of the Governor General, the Dismissal was a struggle over competing visions of how parliamentary democracy works in an elected bicameral system. It was more than just a dispute over the specific issue of both houses having powers over supply - the Senate was blocking much other legislation as well - and went to the heart of democracy and mandates. Did a government with a solid majority in the House of Representatives have the right to govern or did the Senate have the right to veto bring it down? Which democratically elected body was more democratically elected? Was it right for an upper house to demand an early election just because the political wind was blowing the opposition's way? Those considering elections for the British House of Lords would do well to look at the struggle between the Senate and House of Representatives in the Whitlam era to see how conventions are not enough to prevent check & balance powers being used for naked partisan aims.

The disputes about 1975 will last forever. Whitlam is probably arguing about it with Kerr right now. On this mortal coil we must look to see how these messes can be avoided.

What is the Westminster Parliament?

I'm sure some of you have rather blunt answers.

But the question of just what Westminster is lies at the heart of much of the debate about devolution and non-devolution. And the answer affects proposals for tackling the problems caused by devolution.

This applies as much to the House of Lords as much as the House of Commons. The Lords rarely gets a look-in when it comes to the West Lothian Question but if anything it presents even more challenges than the Commons. (And simply waiting for Lords reform is an unrealistic solution; besides some of the proposed alternatives present the same problems.)

Fundamentally the question boils down to whether the Westminster Parliament and Government are there to serve:

• The United Kingdom as a whole albeit with various different packages of law making and services sub-contracted out for certain parts of the country?

Or

• The United Kingdom as a "federal" entity plus England as a "state" entity all mixed in together with various other bits that are devolved to some but not all nations?

The answer is probably, in that typical British fashion, somewhere between the two without much thought as to precisely which. But we now have a greater focus upon the anomalies. And without consensus on what we have at the moment it's hard to obtain consensus on whether change is needed and if so what to.

At present Westminster largely operates as a UK entity. It is much harder to surgically extract "English-only matters" than many cries suggest. Taxation is a UK-wide matter. Most government departments combine UK and English elements - for instance the Department of Health runs the English NHS but also does UK-wide work such as negotiations on international reciprocal use agreements. And the Barnett Formula that determines the funding for the devolved nations is based on spending in England. It would take a major overhaul of how Westminster is structured before one could start restricting the voting rights of some MPs.

There's also the basis that MPs are supposed to serve the whole country, not just their own constituency. This makes every single one of the 650 MPs "our MP", not just the one elected in the local constituency. This is even starker in the House of Lords where peers do not have constituencies and it's impossible to filter out any except perhaps the Bishops.

(And although you could assign the Bishops as "English" it would get messier to divide them up by regions. Only five sees have permanent places in the Lords and the other twenty-one are the most senior representing the Church of England as a whole rather than their individual dioceses. Plus many dioceses cross regional and local government boundaries.)

I'll just add that this part of the problem doesn't necessarily go away with Lords reform. A number of proposals for both appointed and elected upper houses include UK-wide members, whether appointed by Westminster or elected by some of the PR systems.

Now one could undertake a major restructuring within Westminster. But whilst that would make it easier to determine what is and isn't an "English-only matter" it would not address the basic problem of having different majorities on different matters. Could Westminster actually function if conflicting majorities within a single chamber start voting in direct contradiction? Could a minister with a joint English and UK ministry find themselves appointed by one majority and then immediately no confidenced by the other? If a separate English executive was elected by the English-only MPs (let's just leave for now the question of matters devolved to Scotland but not Wales) then you could get the First Minister of England serving also as the Leader of the Opposition of the United Kingdom. Conflict could reign supreme and non-English MPs could get shut out of contention for leadership roles.

What sounds like a simple elegant solution brings a whole minefield of problems with no easy resolution. A more lasting solution must leave each body with a single function, even if some asymmetrical arrangements have to be put in place.

How to make changes last?

No country benefits from having its constitutional affairs in flux. Uncertainty breeds instability which can lead to economic difficulties and social unrest. The approach must always be "Get it right, not get it first". And the outcome should be something that will last well beyond the next change of power.

But how to get change agreed and enacted can be harder than it seems. It is never possible to get everyone to agree 100%. There will always be cries of "what about...?" There is a risk that parties or groups will boycott the process and then spend years trying to undermine the outcome. Opinions can change. And so forth.

It's also critical to get public support for the process and outcomes - and that's the public at large not just the chattering classes of the left or the right. And this needs to be done in synthesis with the political classes - the system is there to represent and serve the public at large but those who have to operate it have to be comfortable to enable it to work.

Scotland's Constitutional Convention was an example of how things can work well and badly. It brought together parties and civic society to openly discuss the details of outcomes. It operated in public. It sought consensus rather than simple majorities. But it lacked input from outside Scotland and opened up problems in the process, both with the West Lothian Question but also because elements of the proposed Scottish Parliament were then copied wholesale for other parts of the United Kingdom. And two significant parties boycotted the Convention - the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party - so had no buy-in to the outcome.

A constitutional convention for the whole United Kingdom could address the basic questions of how to devolve power, how to grant equity to each part of the country and how to manage relations between areas. That could come up with a broad scheme that could be offered to the country. But it would need buy in by multiple players to be effective.

But then how to make it popular and lasting? Referendums are now an established part of our political system. Whatever their merits as a means to legislate they are the right tool to redistribute political power. If the public are to trust politicians again, the politicians must first demonstrate trust in the public.

Inevitably there will be problems along the way. There will be those complaining that the European Union, the monarchy, the House of Commons voting system, direct democracy or any number of other matters aren't being discussed. But you can't overload a convention to the point where nothing gets decided. Then there are the past referendums. To some voters it may seem as though they're being asked to vote again on something already decided in this generation. There are mixed mandates on devolution in England and a settlement will have to navigate these.

But at a broader level there are some basic questions to be grappled with. Including deciding just what the Westminster Parliament is...

Time for a constitutional convention?

Traditionally we've not bothered with form and consistency in this country. Our governance has been riddled with inconsistencies and anomalies. Sometimes they've even come in a single package - for instance when the Greater London Council was created, rather than take sides on removing education from the control of the outer boroughs or expanding it to the inner ones, the compromise was created whereby it was a borough matter in Outer London but in Inner London it was a GLC matter albeit subcontracted to a committee consisting of only the Inner London members. (When the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority were set up there was the question of how to devolve scrutiny of the Metropolitan Police, as their Area wasn't coterminous with Greater London. Initially the solution was to be a joint committee of London Assembly Members and relevant Home Counties MPs but the MPA boundary was realigned.)

And we do things piecemeal rather than as a whole. Local government in England is a bewildering patchwork, with different configurations of powers and election cycles that confuse even hardcore political anoraks. We bemoan low turnouts but how can voters grasp what the elections mean and when they'll take place when even the political classes are confused?

A similar approach was taken with devolution. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have different arrangements. England has nothing meaningful (to most voters a Mayor is a piece of local government not regional and the London Assembly invisible). Anomalies abound everywhere. And it's no longer possible to close some of Pandora's Boxes.

It's not just devolution. In many areas discussion is not joined up. Look at the House of Lords where debate is all about how members are selected and not about what they will do or how the chamber should interact with the Commons.

It is time for a comprehensive look at the distribution of power in this country and to find a settlement acceptable to the whole United Kingdom. But that may not be as easy as it sounds.

In future posts I'll look at some of the ways to do this and obstacles to navigate.

The dangers of knee-jerk constitutional change

So far I think Tom Harris has made the best suggestion about how to respond to the expenses scandal - you can see his brilliant idea at And another thing...: The only possible response to the expenses scandal.

I'm afraid I can't come up with anything quite so spectacular but here's one that would change politics as we know it and that I know many people would be glad to see: Outlaw the Liberal Democrats. That will restore faith in democracy and end the scandal I'm sure!

More seriously there are numerous wild suggestions for constitutional change flying around, some of which seem to have been given no more thought than a brief contemplation in the pub. They are then advocated with an aggressive "any idiot can see this is a good idea" type of reasoning, often with pejorative terms like "reform" and "democracy" used as though they magically validate everything, with those who dare to question just how it will solve the problem at hand bluntly dismissed.

This is in no way a sensible approach to constitutional change. It needs to be carefully thought through, with the knock-on effects considered and with a more permanent basis of support than heat of the moment desires. There are many changes being advocated at the moment which are getting support in the opinion polls, but will people really be happy if they're implemented?

For example one proposal flying around is a standards board that would have the power to suspend or even sack MPs for misconduct. It sounds like a no-brainer doesn't it? Indeed a similar standards board exists for local government. But remember when that board suspended Ken Livingstone from office as Mayor of London? (It was overturned before the suspension took place.) The reaction was against the standards board for seemingly overriding the democratic choice of the people.

The idea of recall elections is taking off. Leaving aside the need to ensure that such a tool is not abused for mere partisan gain, has anyone advocating this ever actually knocked on voters' doors during a parliamentary by-election? I have and to put it mildly voters are not exactly happy that they've had yet another election land on them. Next time there's a by-election on, remember to ask the voters if they want more elections inflicted upon them!

Or there's the simultaneous demands for fixed term parliaments and a snap general election. But the whole point of fixed term parliaments is that you can't have a snap election!

(And fixed term parliaments don't exactly work well either. Germany supposedly has them but this hasn't stopped successive German Chancellors from manipulating the system to call an election whenever they want to. If people want to create the desired effect they need to change the political & popular culture to the point that a Prime Minister calling an early election for political advantage will risk displeasure being felt in the ballot box. But why bother trying to be effective when you can just pass tokenistic ineffective constitutional changes that make you feel good?)

I've also heard calls for more demands for referendums, including ones that the voters can initiate. Direct democracy - it sounds so wonderful doesn't it? But is it always the best thing? Referendums have been used to impose values upon people. In California the courts have just upheld that a referendum can take away basic rights, in this case the right of people to marry. Is direct democracy automatically the best thing if it can be used to deny people their rights?

Then on another level we have suggestions that the whole question of MPs' salaries and expenses should be handled by an independent review body. But one of the reasons why the expenses culture developed the way it did is because MPs did not wish to be seen to be accepting the full salary increases recommended by past reviews and instead an entire culture developed that allowances and expenses were meant to be generous to make up for the wages not being as high as they "should" have been.

And of course the usual suspects have once again pounced on every little thing to demand proportional representation. Apparently this will make it easier to get rid of MPs the public don't like.

So can someone tell me how the majority of voters of London can get rid of Richard Barnbrook from the London Assembly? He was elected by proportional representation after all. Or how are the majority of voters of South East England able to reject Daniel Hannan if they want to, when he is at the top of the list most likely to win the most votes in the proportional representation election on Thursday? Or, if we're taking the single transferable vote, how are the majority of voters of Northern Ireland to reject Bairbre de Brún if they wish? There's no alternative Sinn Féin candidate to choose instead. The harsh reality is that "safe seats" exist not because of magic but because a lot of people vote for political parties regardless of who the individual candidates are, and there's not much that can be done to change that.

Now a lot of this is critical and it's meant to be. I don't believe that there is a set of changes that will act as a magic wand to suddenly transform British politics and end all the expenses issues. Indeed one poll has found that two-thirds of voters agree that there is "nothing fundamentally wrong with Britain's constitution providing that MPs are honest and competent". (Daily Telegraph: MPs expenses: Six in ten voters want autumn general election)

But whilst "if it ain't broke don't fix it" suffices most of the time, it clearly doesn't at the moment. So here are some ideas, no more, no less, to throw into the discussion on ways forward:

* Initiate prosecutions against MPs who have committed criminal offences. If found guilty send them to jail and automatically vacate their seat.

* A standards board with the power to dismiss MPs. Yes this would be a trampling on democratic choice, but frankly there are times when the needs of the country as a whole should override the decision of one individual constituency. The principle has already been conceded at local government level, even if it took the Livingstone case to bring it up.

* That good old standby of an independent review body for MPs' salaries & expenses. However I would give it the power to actually set salaries not merely make recommendations that are politically difficult for MPs to vote in. That may not be popular in the short term but it would be better than the current mess. For oversight I would have the Lords as the chamber in control of the review body.

* For MPs who need a second home in London, instead of giving them the money to rent or buy one, perhaps the Commons should buy the home instead and the MPs only live there for the duration. This is an adaptation of the "hall of residence" idea often floated but repeatedly shot down on security concerns.

* Consider the constitution in a calmer state of affairs - that will produce better results than knee-jerk changes that just jump on the bandwagon.

A lot of this isn't sexy, it isn't dynamic and it isn't radical. But it's targeted at the problem itself, it isn't seeking to exploit the crisis for ends that have nothing to do with it and it isn't proposing the shake up the country. Calm reflection is always better than instant reaction.

A future UK Senate?

Over on ConservativeHome: CentreRight, Daniel Hamilton has posted How would you reform the House of Lords?. This issue has rather gone off the boil for the time being, but cannot evade resolution forever. And I think it's about time the Conservative Party took a lead in constitutional reform, rather than adopting a "no change at all" position at the time and then having no ability to influence the outcome, then being unable to do anything more than complain at the result (see for instance Scottish devolution).

Last year I wrote a series of posts on second chambers looking at some of the upper houses in other parliamentary democracies to see if there is anything in them that could be copied. Some good ideas stand out, but what is also clear is that different countries use the second chamber for different things, which comes to the nub of the problem.

Fundamentally there are three questions about reform of the House of the Lords that need to be answered in order. They are:

1). What role in the system should the second chamber play?
2). What powers should it have?
3). How should it be composed?

Unfortunately nearly everyone dives on the third question and then spends forever debating such minutiae as the ratio of elected to appointed members, voting systems and constituencies rather than grappling with the first two.

But it is in answering the first two that will lead to the answer for the third. Now many upper houses around the world are part of federal systems, with the upper house designed as a states's rights chamber, to mirror the lower house reflecting the people. This is true of the Senate of Australia and the Bundesrat of Germany, and for that matter also of the Senate of Canada and the Rajya Sabha of India. Now this takes us into the difficult point that in the UK power is not evenly devolved and none of the four parts has the same level of power. This is not a federal country and so does not need a federal upper house.

Similarly it is often suggested that the upper house should be composed of representatives from local government (indeed Daniel suggests this in his own post). But does local government, primarily an administrative matter, really need such a direct link to the legislature?

The House of Lords may once have been a house to represent a key political interest group (the great landowners) but it has evolved into a chamber that primarily scrutinises and amends legislation, occasionally acting as a check on the powers of the lower house. This should remain the role post reform, answering the first question.

So what powers should it have? The first, and easiest to address, are those over supply (or the Budget). For a parliamentary democracy to function effectively there must be a single body that decides the government, including the crucial power of access to revenue. Anyone familiar with the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis will be aware of the mess that arose because both houses had power over the budget, resulting in a direct clash with the constitutional principle that governments live and die in the lower house. (One could, I suppose, give the power to a joint sitting of the two houses but it would have to be immediate.) It's notable that most upper houses founded in Westminster system democracies since 1911 have tended to have the supply powers restricted in precisely this way.

I would also have an assumption built in that if the two houses conflict then ultimately at the end of any dispute resolution procedure then either the overwhelming will of the Commons should prevail over the upper or the electorate should settle the matter. This will take more than a mere one year delay as presently in the Parliament Act. The starting point should be that if a bill can't get through the upper house it either dies or a special mechanism must be invoked that requires a more substantial threshold than a normal majority in the lower house to override it. Perhaps the Commons should have a 2/3 majority to override a bill failing in the upper house, or there should be a joint sitting (with the numbers in the upper house always deliberately smaller than the Commons) or perhaps each house can have the power to refer a bill directly to the people if the other house will not pass it. (After all if we're allowing the Commons the chance to get its way over the upper house, why not the reverse?) We may also give the upper house extra powers in particular areas. Currently it has an absolute veto over postponing general elections. What about giving it an absolute veto over all matters affecting the Commons, including voting systems, raising MPs's salaries and so forth? I admit this section is not as fully thought through as it could be, but there are several clear possibilities.

Finally we come to the composition. Again there's an easy starting point followed by a quick descent into murk. But it's notable that many upper houses around the world have staggered elections, so that the entire chamber is not elected in one go. This is a useful check against a sudden convulsion in the Commons and allows for the upper house to take a longer term view. Beyond this it gets murky.

As I said above, I don't think the upper house should be converted into a states's rights or local councils's chamber, so filling it with nominees from elsewhere in the system isn't in line with this. And since it wouldn't be aiming to represent a particular element I don't think a deliberate malapportionment such as an equal number of members per county (where London and the Isle of Wight would have parity!) would work. But what about an elected chamber that transcended the limitations of geographic representation?

It is here that I must acknowledge inspiration from the two Irish Seanads - the Irish Free State Seanad and the present Seanad Éireann. The former had a country wide election that resulted in some Senators being elected who represented particular groups in society who would not normally have been well represented in a constituency based system. The latter has both members elected by university graduates and members representing "Vocational Panels" that seek to represent the key strands in Irish society (Administration, Agriculture, Culture & Education, Labour and Industry & Commerce). Now the Vocational Panels have come in for criticism as being elected by party politicians and producing party politicians, but the university seats routinely elect independents and show a willingness amongst voters to not let the upper house be a total partisan walk-over.

Now a UK wide election for even eighty upper house members could get very messy if using a single constituency. But what if for the upper house voters could register as a member of one of a series of groupings, with each grouping electing a number of upper house members by postal vote using the Single Transferable Vote? (The concept of separate electoral rolls with choice as to which one is one is common - perhaps the best known example in the Anglosphere are the Māori seats in the Parliament of New Zealand.) A mechanism could be established to monitor the individual rolls and allow for the addition and removal of groupings as deemed necessary. Voters could vote by post to elect a proportion - say a third at a time - of the upper house. The nature of the upper house seats could encourage candidacies and voting on a different scale from the Commons, breaking the partisan deadlock and encouraging independent candidates with suitable backgrounds. And UK wide elections could help represent groups in society who frequently find they are too scattered and divided to be listened to in the Commons.

This would be a radical change for the upper house (we couldn't really carry on calling it "the Lords" so I guess "Senate" is as good a working title as any) but one that has very few elements that have not been tried and tested before. Maybe this could be the way forward...

A written constitution?

I've just seen BBC News: Straw's written constitution hint with the suggestion that the UK could get a written constitution produced over the next ten to twenty years and it's got me thinking.

I used to dismiss the idea in the belief that the UK's system worked perfectly well without one, and indeed allowed greater scope for flexibility. But nowadays I'm not so sure. The changes of the last eleven years, particularly devolution, are taking time to settle in and there are still some major areas not properly addressed (such as the West Lothian Question).

A written constitution that could only be changed by referendum could well have required proponents of devolution to sort out the English question before submitting the scheme to the people and there be democratic legitimacy for whatever situation was created. A written constitution would also remove the ability of parties to demand voting system changes as part of a blackmail in a hung parliament, which makes me wonder why the Liberal Democrats are so keen (although they've also never cottoned onto the fact that proportional representation would also require them to actually make a choice between the main parties and tell the public in advance of polling day).

Of course this relies on such a constitution being particularly well drafted. But are other countries that have constitutions really so badly governed because of them? Where have they had conflict that the constitution has made resolution hard? Many of them could have arisen without one.

This is an idea that warrants much further discussion...