Guy Aitchison (Bristol, OK): Could Gordon Brown’s “national conversation” on constitutional change finally be under way as Richard Wildon of Involve suggests? I listened to a lively and intelligent discussion on BBC Radio 4 in which audience members posed questions on a wide range of constitutional issues to Michael Wills, the Minister for Constitutional Renewal (it should eventually be available here to listen again). What really came across was how much people were willing to think critically about the issues and engage with them on a serious level. Now I know that the producers will have influenced who was put on air and what kind of questions were covered, but the level of debate and the interest shown seemed to provide at least some corrective to the prevailing view, famously expressed by Alastair Campbell, that “Worcester woman”, didn’t give a **** about the constitution.
Instead, a majority of the callers advanced carefully reasoned arguments. A surprising number suggested a written constitution was needed, and although Michael Wills didn’t directly address this possibility, he didn’t seek to deny it either. This cosy consensus was only interrupted forty minutes in when a Mr J.T phoned in determined to put a stop to all dangerous talk of written constitutions. “We don’t need it”, he barked, “we’ve been doing this for hundreds of years! It’s evolved! It’s admired worldwide!”. Admired by who wasn’t made clear, and the next caller was swiftly brought on and gave a more sophisticated argument against. A written constitution was no good, he said, because it was open to abuse and manipulation in times of crisis. Fair point I suppose, but isn’t an unwritten constitution equally, if not more vulnerable?
The whole discussion had a slightly odd feel to it since the Government doesn’t seem to have made its mind up on what is and what isn’t to be included in this “national conversation”. A written constitution? Maybe. A Bill of Rights and Responsibilities? Almost certainly. How do we get there? Not quite sure. In response to the first caller, Wills declared the “West Lothian Question” strictly out of bounds. The Union, we were told, is “non-negotiable”. He also seemed keen to dampen hopes of electoral reform without explicitly ruling it out. His answers to the many questions on PR were bizarre to say the least, since he seemed to be arguing that because a change of government is possible under the current system (“look it happened in ’79 and ’97”) there is no need to consider more proportionality. If the Government is going to deal seriously with arguments for PR, it’s going to have to come up with something better than this: as at least four of the callers pointed out, the unfairness of the voting system strikes to the heart of the issue of disengagement.
My final observation is just how confused and uncertain the Conservative position seems to be at the moment. In his response to Wills, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, Nick Herbert seemed caught between advocating, on the one hand, Cameron’s original position that “constitutional tinkering” is a distraction and the real issue is trust, and, on the other hand, suggesting that the Government needs to be much bolder and more radical. Herbert landed a decent blow when he referred to citizens’ juries (still not sure what they are yet) as “phoney consultations”, and called the whole Green Paper process “junk politics” rather than “new politics”. But if they’re going to engage with the reform agenda, I think the Tories will need to resolve the inherent tension between their potentially radical agenda of ‘localism’ and direct democracy, and the ingrained constitutional conservatism of their national thinking.
