Describe Russia’s form of government; compare it with the USA and Britain.

Read the text dealing with the question of British unwritten constitution.

 

· What does the author think about the system Britain currently has? What are his main arguments? Do you agree with his point of view?

· What is Constitution? What are its functions in the states that have written constitutions?

· Can you think of any advantages of having an unwritten constitution?

· What is devolution? How has it been developing in the UK?

The Guardian, 6.12.2000

The People versus the Crown

 

Our unwritten constitution is no longer working. Inadequate government is not simply a result of badly thought out policies. Jonathan Freedland explains why more fundamental reform is now urgently needed.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's been the rallying cry of the defenders of our ancient, unwritten constitution through the ages – if not always in those words. Sure, say the old guard, our patchwork quilt of unspoken custom and tacit tradition may not make logical sense when set out on a clean sheet of paper – that's one good reason why we keep it unwritten. But, insist the keepers of the flame, our non-systematic system has held up just fine for centuries. So long as it still works, there's no need to change it.

The trouble is, that's no longer true. The system is not working: it is broke – and we need to fix it. For the test of any constitution is the quality of governance it produces. In just the last few years we have seen all too clearly how well our system works: from the great pension scandal of the mid-1980s to the BSE calamity * of the 1990s, from the outbreak of sleaze to the sell-off of our railways, from the poll tax to the debacle of the Dome ** – the proof is all around us of a standard of government that is just not good enough. In each case the system did not contain the checks and balances, the basic scrutiny, that might have weeded out bad legislation and prevented disastrous mistakes.

This cannot be the exclusive fault of this administration or that individual politician. It happens too often for that. Rather, as both the Scott inquiry into the arms-for-Iraq affair or the Phillips report on BSE concluded, the flaw lies in the system itself – the way we are governed. And that means our constitution.

The British people woke up to this fact long ago, even if few dare say it. Polling data consistently show a decline in esteem for our institutions and the system which links them together. While 48% expressed "quite a lot of confidence" in the House of Commons in 1985, that figure had halved by 1995. A year later a European Union poll found that Britons had less faith in their parliament than the people of any member country bar Portugal. Local government's standing has never been weaker, with turnout in council elections dropping like a stone. Trust in our institutions is in freefall, with the young especially disenchanted. One Mori survey found 71% of first-time voters convinced their ballot would "make little or no difference to their lives". We are beginning to vote with our feet – by staying away from the polling station. Britain's turnout figures are in decline, with recent by-elections lucky to involve more than 30% of the vote. In one Leeds seat, the turnout fell below one in five of all registered voters. It all adds up to a growing loss of faith in our system of governance.

These trends are not wholly new: reformers have seen the need for a radical overhaul of our constitution for decades. But now there is an extra urgency. For not only is the old system not working well: it is beginning to come apart. Since 1997 Labour has undertaken a raft of constitutional changes so radical they have historians reaching for the 1830s to find a precedent. Whether it's the rolling programme of devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or the partial reform of the House of Lords, the current government has shattered forever the traditionalist belief that our system is a frail, mystical thing that belongs in a glass case and can never be touched by human hand. The conservative conviction that the constitution has remained unaltered for centuries – and therefore cannot be changed in future – is gone. The patchwork quilt can be repaired and even renewed: after all, it's unravelling already.

Specifically, Labour's changes have exposed to the light questions that had long been buried – and which now demand to be answered. Take devolution. Until 1997 Britain had never really come clean about its true nature as a multi-national entity: the four constituent nations each had their own cabinet department, but Britain was essentially a unitary state governed from Westminster and Whitehall. Devolution has blown that apart.

It has forced us to recognise that there are distinct countries within Britain, each with the right and ambition to govern itself – whether through a parliament in Edinburgh or assemblies in Cardiff and Belfast. The days of crypto-federalism seem to be over: thanks to devolution, Britain has acted like a country ready to come out as a federal entity.

But not completely. For Labour's decentralisation may have brought to the surface a clutch of dilemmas about Britain, but it has not resolved them. So, for example, most Britons now accept that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland deserve home rule – but what about England? Should Westminster serve as a federal legislature, dealing only with UK-wide problems – or should it double as a de facto English parliament? Why does one of the island nations, Scotland, have more autonomy than the others? Who should sit and vote in the Westminster parliament; in the terms of the famed West Lothian question ***, why should Scottish MPs vote on exclusively English matters when English MPs have no say on exclusively Scottish ones?

What Labour has done is to open a can of worms: the worms were always there, we just couldn't see them before. Now the can is open we cannot look away. Perhaps the best illustration is the House of Lords. Some around Tony Blair might once have thought that expelling all but 92 of the hereditary peers would solve the problems of Britain's second chamber. Instead it's done the opposite, suddenly drawing attention to the absurd democratic deficit in parliament. When the hereditaries were there, the whole body could be written off as some Ruritanian joke ****. But Blair's reforms have prompted Britons to take a closer look. They now see a supposedly reformed second chamber barely more democratic than the blue-blood body it replaced – in which not a single member is elected. Leaving well alone, as the Tories used to advocate, was one thing. Now, say many Britons, if you're going to tinker with the upper house, you might as well make it democratic.

Shattered mystique

And that's a view which is beginning to apply to our entire constitution: now that Labour has broken the taboo by daring to change it, logic demands that it be changed properly – and democratically. For the current, spatchcocked arrangement of old custom and New Labour modernisation risks being the worst of both worlds, creating a constitution that makes no sense and lacks the old (if spurious) defence of ancient continuity. The mystique has shattered at last; now our very system of government is up for grabs. Even the Conservatives are discussing radical, constitutional change: witness William Hague's flirtation with the notion of an English parliament.

There is one last factor which makes urgent our need for a new constitutional settlement. Britain may be an island, but we are not alone. The changes inside the United Kingdom have coincided with profound shifts outside it, too.

We are days away from a summit in Nice which will debate and decide the future shape of the European Union. Who should govern? A simple majority of member nations or each state by wielding its individual veto? How should the peoples of Europe be bound together? With a common currency and a shared military force – or as a loose, free trade area? How should Europe declare its values? With communiques and treaties or with a basic law? In other words, the European Union is in the midst of constitutional upheaval, too.

Beyond even Europe's boundaries, there is a similarly profound argument. The global anti-capitalist movement unleashed in Seattle and Prague asks who should rule the world – its people or the corporations and the World Trade Organisation? On the streets with the protesters or in the summit rooms of Nice, the debate turns on a single word: sovereignty. Put simply, who should be in charge? That's an issue for the world, as it grapples with the domination of Microsoft or Big Oil and gropes for a new regime of global governance. It's an issue for Europe, as it works out whether sovereignty can be pooled or only diluted. And it's an issue for Britain: who is sovereign in our land?

What it all adds up to – the weaknesses of Britain's old system, the changes made by Labour and the worldwide confusion over sovereignty – is a need: we are crying out for a new constitutional settlement. We urgently require a new dispensation that would work better than the current set-up, improve the quality of our governance and yield better outcomes and better policies that would affect all Britons' lives. A new dispensation would also complete some unfinished business left over from Labour's programme of constitutional reform, turning today's "unsettlement" into a settlement. For those who care about the survival of Britain that has become an urgent task: for if we do not decide a future for the union of our nations, then that union will simply unravel. Britain will break apart.

Our country needs this new settlement within our borders to work out our place in the world beyond them. Many reformers have argued that so long as we remain confused over our own sovereignty, we have little chance of sharing or pooling it with others. When the relationship between Scotland and England is still vexed, is it any wonder we cannot find the right connection between Britain and France?

We need to make a change. We need to replace an unwritten constitution which consists of one abstract idea – the crown-in-parliament – with a settlement that fits the nation we have become and the world that now exists. We cannot wear the old, moth-eaten garb of the past any longer: we have outgrown it. This is a new century and a new millennium: we need a new constitution.

 

*BSE calamity – Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease. In the United Kingdom, the country worst affected, more than 180,000 cattle have been infected and 4.4 million slaughtered during the eradication program.

**debacle of the Dome – John Major had originally conceived the idea of the Millennium Dome as a relatively small-scale, Festival of Britain event. Then Tony Blair got elected, threw a bunch of money at it and vastly increased the size, scope and funding of the project. Open for just 12 months, it received a total of 6,500,000 visitors, of which 6,000,000 had been to see the Festival of Britain which only ran from May to September. By the time the New Millennium Experience Company was officially liquidated in 2002, audits reported that the total cost of the Dome had been £789 million pounds. Of this, just £189 million was recovered from ticket sales: the rest was paid for by funding secured from the National Lottery.

*** West Lothian question – refers to issues concerning the ability of Members of Parliament from constituencies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to vote on matters that affect only people living in England. This has occurred because of the devolution of power from Westminster to the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies and Scottish Parliament. The question was first posed by William Gladstone in 1886 in his speech on the first Irish Home Rule bill. It was again raised when the prospect of Scottish devolution was posed in the 1970s. On 14 November 1977 Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for the Scottish constituency of West Lothian, asked during a British House of Commons debate over Scottish and Welsh devolution: For how long will English constituencies and English Honourable members tolerate... at least 119 Honourable Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland exercising an important, and probably often decisive, effect on English politics while they themselves have no say in the same matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

**** Ruritanian joke - Ruritania is a fictional country in central Europe which forms the setting for three books by Anthony Hope. It lent its name to a genre of adventure stories known as Ruritanian romances, and is used to refer to a hypothetical country.

Prepare your own talks about different forms of government, make sure you can give several examples of different countries that have or used to have this form of government. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of this form of government.

Split in two groups – one defending the idea of monarchy, the other – of republic. First discuss in groups advantages and disadvantages of both monarchical and republican form of government. Then make a general discussion, trying to support your group’s point of view and find counterarguments to what the other group says.

Part 2

BRITISH MONARCHY

Vocabulary

 

The Plantagenets; The Lancastrians; The Yorkists; The Tudors; The Stewarts; The Hanoverians; Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; The House of Windsor

The Act of Settlement; line of succession to the British throne; primogeniture; Glorious Revolution; Bill of Rights

figurehead

abdicate (the throne in favour of someone); abdication

subjects, sovereign

heir apparent

10 Downing Street, the headquarters of Her Majesty's Government

Whitehall, a metonym for overall British governmental administration

Commonwealth, Commonwealth realms, Dominion

State Opening of Parliament; Speech from the Throne/ Queen's Speech; Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod (or just the Black Rod); Coronation; Trooping the Colour; Royal Ascot; Holyrood Week; Garden Parties; Garter Day

Royal household; Royal assent

 

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/royal_prerogative.htm

Royal prerogatives, The Queen reigns but does not rule:

·The Queen has the right to appoint and dismiss a Prime Minister. However, in the 21^st century this is convention as opposed to reality. In fact, after an election, the Queen chooses the leader of the majority party to lead the Commons. However, what happens if the Prime Minister refuses to quit after losing a vote of no confidence is unclear – as it has never happened in recent political history. Theoretically, the monarch can exercise powers of appointment and dismissal. How this would fit in with a democracy is difficult to decide.

·The monarch has other powers of appointment (ministers, peers, senior C of E officials, head of BBC, senior civil servants, etc.) In reality these are chosen by the Prime Minister; only the Order of the Garter and the Order of Merit are at the personal disposal of the Queen. Therefore, a vast amount of power with regards to senior appointments rests with the Prime Minister.

·The Queen opens and dissolves Parliament. She also approves all statutes of law. In reality, the date of a general election is set by the Prime Minister and the Queen, in the State Opening of Parliament, simply reads out the proposed bills for the next 5 years of a government and plays no part in deciding them. No monarch has refused to give the Royal Assent to a government bill (passed at this stage by both the Commons and Lords) since 1707. Now it would appear to be completely untenable that the Queen would refuse to sign a government bill that had passed the Commons, select committees, the Lords etc. It would spark off a major constitutional crisis.

·In theory, the monarch has the right to grant pardons and input some sentences. In reality this power is exercised by the Home Secretary; a classic example was when Jack Straw stated that Myra Hindley’s life term meant life.

·The monarch, via proclamations or Orders in Council, may declare war or treaties, without the input of the Commons/Lords. In reality, the declaration of war and the signing of treaties is done by the Prime Minister acting on behalf of the Crown. The 2003 declaration of war against Iraq was done by a Prime Minister and not by the monarch. One is a democratically elected politician accountable to the electorate via an election; the other is in the position by a quirk of birth.

·The monarch is above the law and has crown immunity. The legal immunity conferred by the Royal Prerogative may extend to institutions and servants of the Crown. Cabinet ministers may try to use crown immunity to avoid the release of parliamentary documents as they are servants of the Crown. This remains an issue that lawyers discuss and analyse to this day – can ministers of the government use the Royal Prerogative to stop an investigation in to the work that they do on certain issues?