Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The subscription only section of today's Prospect carries an essay by Anthony King which is the first sustained critique of the Green Paper on the constitution. The tone is bleak and slightly patronising as you might expect but it is serious and refreshing about the ambition, the difficulties and the issues avoided, including the English question to which the professor's solution is to decimate the number of Scottish and Welsh MPs. King asks,
But what does Brown understand by constitutional reform? How does he intend to bring it about? Are the specific changes he proposes desirable in themselves? Are they likely to achieve the prime minister's own declared objectives? So unused are the British to debating large constitutional issues that these questions have so far gone largely unanswered, indeed largely unasked.
Well, they certainly HAVE been asked, here and elsewhere on-line, as well as in Scotland and Wales (King does not refer to the SNP's White Paper on Scotland's future). But it is a relief to see this point made about the mainstream media not least the BBC. King goes on to note the way that,
when it came to a variety of larger issues, such as the possibility of Britain's moving towards adopting a new bill of rights and a written constitution, Brown's approach was more tentative. Words and phrases such as "consultation," "dialogue" and "sustained debate" abound in both the statement and the green paper.
And later King makes the good point,
Green papers are supposed to be consultation documents, but "The Governance of Britain" gives the reader no indication of how the concerned citizen can make his or her views known. It contains neither a postal nor an email address to which comments might be forwarded, nor does it set out a deadline for the submission of views.
Again, there is a contrast with the Scottish White Paper which does precisely this and now has an extensive on-line selection of views. King also asks why is Brown doing all this, something a number of his colleagues have also puzzled over.
a serious politician like Brown is unlikely to embark on a major project such as this unless he believes there is a great deal at stake, and Brown has indicated clearly what he believes to be at stake. One is the health of British democracy; Brown is concerned about what he sees as the extent of citizen disengagement from politics. Another, related to the first, is the health of British society; he worries about social disintegration and the decline of a sense of community. A third is the unity of Britain. Brown believes Britain should be one nation, a nation at ease with itself and whose citizens are at ease with each other.
This may well be right. If so it is interesting that no one seems to think that what is at stake is the need to replace the constitution because it is broke. Which it is. Is King right? Why do you think Brown is doing it?
