Guy Aitchison (London, OK): As removal men swap round furniture in an unassuming terraced house in Downing Street, what talk of the constitution? Well, as I noted in reaction to Brown’s speech on Sunday, talk of a “new constitutional settlement” has made little impression on the media, and judging by Brown’s interview in today’s Independent it hasn’t really caught the public’s imagination either. Questions submitted by the Indy’s readers focused on Iraq, climate change and Europe, as well as questions about his family life, background and style of rule (“are you a Stalinist control freak?” being amongst the more direct). This is fair enough, they’re important issues. But out of fifty odd questions, none mention the constitution. What seems to exercise people is all Brown’s talk of “Britishness” on top of Scottish MPs voting on English laws (five questions on this). Brown’s predictable response invokes WWII to prove that it’s “Britishness, British institutions and British values which brought about our greatest achievements, and which bind together our different regions and nations into one country”. He claims to have been misunderstood over the call for a Union Jack in every garden and over Gazza’s goal against Scotland and there is yet another mention for his favourite TV show “Britain’s Got Talent”. No one will be very surprised to learn that he’d never support English votes on English Laws which would “lead to the break-up of the Union”, and his answer to a question on electoral reform seems to confirm his support for AV. Various campaign groups, including the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy, have taken out full page adverts in the papers to highlight their cause. Can they capture the public imagination and help generate the momentum necessary for democratic reforms despite the media’s apparent indifference?
Update: In his analysis of Brown's speech outside Number 10 Nick Robinson came out with this little nugget: "Constitutional change, sounds terribly dull, but I suspect it will leap from the page as it concerns what it means to be British."Perhaps Nick has worked out which way the wind is blowing as its a theme he returns to in his blog where he predicts that Britishness (and the attendant dullness of the constitution) could be "one of the great surprises" of a Brown government.
