(Twenty-minute read)

Here is a country that now does not know its status in the world offering 3 million EU citizens settled status while its citizens (67 Million) are (under an unwritten constitutional monarchy) surfs to the crown.

If Brexit achieves anything worthwhile surely it must be a written constitution.

Presently the constitution of the United Kingdom is the set of rules that determine the political governance of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The government of England, as part of the United Kingdom, is a constitutional monarchy. This type of governmental structure allows the monarchy to share power with an organized government.

The three different parts of a constitutional monarchy include the Crown, Parliament, and Government. The Crown, Parliament, and the Government are all different entities in the United Kingdom and they all completely different duties.

Parliament passes and debates policy, the Government oversees the daily operations of the policy and the Crown notifies Parliament of the Government’s idea on a new policy.

In this system, the monarch is the head of state, while the Prime Minister is head of Her Majesty’s Government, which wields executive power. The executive power technically rests with the monarch, but she only exercises this power through Her Majesty’s Government.

From 1688, monarchical absolutism, aristocratic privilege and capitalist energy combined into a new form of rule: cabinet government accountable to a parliament of Commons and Lords under the crown.

It created an engine of global conquest with built-in checks that protected the kingdom from would-be dictators and, especially, democracy.

Now that the Queen has agreed to suspend Parliament her position as the monarch is now called into a constitutional quagmire.

There is a host of other challenges surrounding Brexit, but none loom larger than the raw exercise of power, no matter what norms or unspoken rules of democratic society stands in the way.

Then there is the other matter that parties and politicians are infamous for failing to keep their promises made before the elections.

What we are witnessing is right-wing populism- the delegitimization of political opponents and uncooperative institutions

The great irony in all of this is that populism isn’t actually that popular and that only by exploiting the system’s weaknesses can they get anything done at all.

What defines both Donal Trump and Boris is neither of them actually have a popular mandate to govern.

Up to now, very few citizens of the UK appear to have any great interest in constitutional affairs.

Why?

Because there is no single document which explains how England is governed.

This means it requires a considerable amount of study and probably a degree in politics or law to fully understand how Britain is governed.

Politicians can hide behind the fact that since the current British Constitution is hidden from plain sight, they can get away with all sorts of things without anyone noticing.

You always have to rely on so-called experts to explain things to you.

That said, much of the British Constitution is based not on law but on an unenforceable convention.

The British Constitution is whatever the government can get away with and the outcome of the Brexit referendum is constitutional dynamite for Britain.

A new sovereign – “the people” – has now displaced the old.

In fact and in the spirit of the referendum its result drove a stake through its heart of British Politics.

Because England’s uncodified system cannot cope with pressures imposed either by In or Out vote for Brexit the terminating the 1972 European Communities Act, “parliamentary sovereignty” will be restored only as a technicality: 

Without urgent changes, a populist dictatorship of ‘the people’ looms.

Do individuals have the right to vote, to assemble, to free speech, to property, to equal treatment; and how are these rights protected? Can the executive imprison us or invade our liberty through surveillance without due cause? If not, how must it establish such a cause?

What is clear now is that England must bury its arbitrary, hyper-centralised empire-state. For even a newfangled supreme court cannot preserve the unwritten constitution that is being shredded by Brexit.

Overall, the British Constitution is a conceptual mess, even if it somehow works to some limited extents.

Why?

Because Mr Johnson and Mr Cumming’s in the name of “the people”, are seeking to break any resistance to Brexit.

In so doing they have opened the final battle over the old order.

It may take a 20-year confrontation, but the framework of 1688 cannot determine the revolution unleashed by Brexit, not least because Northern Ireland and Scotland have already undergone a form of constitutional normalisation, which is why they felt safe enough to vote to stay in the EU.

The conflicts between Englands and its constituent parts are far from resolved.

When they are resolved at all, by conventions and by expedients and by trial-and-error there is no sensible order to any of it. And rest assured in Northern Ireland nothing is really ever regarded as “unconstitutional”. Aspiration need not be part of the main constitutional document.

A new and democratic constitution is now essential, one that rests on popular sovereignty but protects the rights of all.

Of course, it is not difficult to describe what one’s preferred constitution should be like:

A worthy compendium of the rights and duties for everyone concerned with the polity.

But a piece of paper is never enough, whatever is printed on it.

It just shows people what their rights and freedoms are, in a way that no police officer, government official or politician can ever deny them.

The greatest thing is that should anyone try to deny the people their rights and freedoms, they can be protected by testing those rights and freedoms in court. Since such rights and freedoms are clearly written in a document that everyone can own, it will be much harder for anyone to deny the people those rights and freedoms.

That now is the most important reason why England needs a written constitution.

It would help keep Britain united.

A constitution is not there for when things going well, but to regulate the consequences of things going badly. And it should be expected that things will go badly.

A constitution will vary with society so why not create an online living document rather than a traditional written Constitution to evolve with society and current political values.

It would create clarity for the electorate and emphasises the use of accountability as every government will be made to answer the public’s questions.

The government need not be of a specific type, such as democratic, socialist, etc., but it does need to have parameters that are defined and relatively unchangeable.

A constitutional government is any government whose authority and construction are defined by a constitution.

The irony of Brexit is that by leaving the EU, the English now find themselves in even more need of grownup, European-style arrangements.

The outcome could be a federal UK if Scotland agrees.

That is for the future.

It is no longer possible to have an uncodified multinational entity inside a larger multinational one actively codifying its reach, the nature of British rule could not but be threatened.

Britians arcane hotch-pitch of freedoms and rights cannot be defended in the 21st century.

Once thought to be indestructible and now revealed to be as ephemeral as dust in the wind.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.