Daniel Leighton (London, Power Inquiry): The spectre of popular sovereignty haunts Bournemouth. Amidst the fevered speculation over election timing, binge drinking and Sun-sponsored men dressed as Gordon Brown clones in Churchill style clothing flicking inverted v signs at conference goers to support the Sun's campaign for a referendum, the serious the debate over our constitutional future has also been continuing.Keith Vaz's ethnic Minority Task force held an event with Minister of State at Justice, Michael Wills, and columnist Yasmin Alibhai Brown, with the admirably blunt title of "Should the UK have a written constitution?". Michael, who is in charge of the whole participation process announced by the Prime Minister, rightly noted the fact that we now have a Government that has itself actually posed this question and this is a historic first. His own answer was essentially "only if people think we should have one". Well, yes but the State of the Nation polls over the last decade and a half have always shown they do, by a massive (if passive) 75 per cent or more.
The question is, what will be the process that will enable people to articulate their views on the matter? Much therefore rests on whether the Citizens Summit which he is organising, and which will be asked to draw up a British Statement of Values and the Bill of Rights and Duties, is both outward looking and has a deliberative process with clear outcomes and some independence, or whether it is just a glorified focus group responding to pre-planned questions.
Michael's boss, Jack Straw, speaking at a Power Inquiry event with Helena Kennedy (more on which soon), cited the failure of John Howard's recent attempt to develop a written statement of values in Australia due it being seen as a top down confection of out of touch elites. They can't say they weren't warned...
Playing against type as the constitutional reform sceptic Yasmin raised the familiar concern about the inflexibility of a written constitution. The frequency with which this question arises shows how bad we are at thinking about what constitutions are for. They function to uphold agreements on the procedures by which power is managed, exercised and distributed. Written constitutions make the exercise of power visible and ensure that when change does occur it takes place according to democratically grounded principles and transparent processes. They are about how change happens.
A somewhat stretched analogy between Microsoft and open source software might clarify. We currently have a Microsoft constitution whereby the ruling party gets a 4 year monopoly on the source code, allowing the public access to some carefully managed democratic applications. We need an open source constitution which explicitly places ownership of its codes in the public domain. Citizens should be able to help improve and modify democratic applications and fix bugs in the way we make decisions - and also the way constitutional change itself happens. The art of democratic constitutionalism is not to petrify existing values and power relationships but to ensure that when decisions are made they are made in a non-arbitrary way.
The above is related to those Sun sponsored Gordon clones I mentioned at the beginning. Beneath the surface of Labour's opportunistic deference to parliamentary sovereignty and the Conservatives opportunistic advocacy of a referendum on the EU Treaty is the question of sovereignty. In our present ancient order, the issue has to be posed in terms of chosing between popular and parliamentary sovereignty. What we need is constitutional sovereignty which precisely protects us from descent into uncouth Sun-style plebiscitary democracy with a clear articulation of when parliament's authority must give way to that of the people.
By refusing to clarify this, British elites will continue to invoke popular sovereignty for their own factional ends - be they Right wing media oligarchs, ruling parties or simply elected representatives nervous of giving away power. Gordon Brown is seeking to reclaim Britishness from right wing bigots, it is about time we started to reclaim popular sovereignty from the right wing populists.
