How Brown began

Guy Aitchison (London, OK):  Just re-published on-line by Unlock Democracy, the 1992 speech which marked Brown's first engagement with the constitutional agenda. It is very revealing:

"The current movement for constitutional reform is of historic importance. It signals the demand for a decisive shift in the balance of power in Britain, a long overdue transfer of sovereignty from those who govern to those who are governed, from an ancient and indefensible Crown sovereignty to a modern and popular sovereignty, not just tidying up our constitution but transforming it."

The Charter 88 Sovereignty Lecture , chaired by Helena Kennedy, took place a few days before the 1992 general election was called. It is invaluable in understanding what Brown's thinking was before he took office, on everything from a British Bill of Rights to Freedom of Information and Lords reform. Does Brown’s analysis of Britain in 1992 as a society in which ‘we have become more centralised, less sensitive to individual rights and less free than we were’, sound familiar? As the day of Brown’s long-awaited accession to the premiership draws closer his early reflections on the ‘Hobbesian’ unbounded government which Britain’s ‘unwritten constitution’ creates shed light on what a ‘constitutional settlement’ needs to deal with. Let us hope that it’s this Brown, and not a Blairised version that takes office.