Taspher’s Constitution Proposal
This is part of a series of threads I am making which cover the constitution of the UK and how we can fix it. You can find the main page for these threads here.
The Proposal
Explaination
This section sets out how the country is divided.
Article 1: Self-apparent as to why it exists. The only spicy thing is removing BoTC and CD status and merging them with the crown proper. These territories are currently defended by the UK, but do not pay taxes to the UK. I also think that incorporating the Falklands, for instance, into the UK proper will help to stave off the eventual Argentine aggression backed by probably some future US president.
Article 2: I’ll cover the “House of Thanes” in a different thread. This is just setting out the foundation of power in the UK, making it clear that Parliament has powers over everything, and that territory cannot leave the UK (without an amendment).
Article 3: Effectively ends the devolved parliaments and creates a tiered local government. You have the Kingdom, and the Shires. (You also have Viscountys and Parishes underneath these, but they aren’t important here.) It also establishes that the Shires are wholly subordinate to Parliament; this is not a federal system.
Article 4: Self-explanitory.
Article 5: This is mostly self-explanatory. It introduces concepts that will be discussed at greater depth in other parts. It also once again makes clear that everything is subordinate to Parliament, and that all power comes from the King. It also implicitly outlaws quangos and the giving of legislative or regulatory power to anyone but politicians (sections 1 and 4). This doesn’t mean that ministers cannot just do whatever some quango tells them to do, but it does mean that they cannot act on their own.
Comments on this would make more sense if you think that one of these councils should not exist, or if you think there should be another great council of state (e.g. the Synodd).
I fail to see why we need a written Constitution, we started with Magna Carta and continued with various Acts of Parliament, that has worked for 1000 yrs, the US has one and look at the mess they are in. I know I am biased, I am British through and through, still pay tax in the UK, but have lived the last 13yrs in Colombia, I am married to a Colombiana, which is my reason for staying here, but I wanted more say here, so applied for and was granted Dual Nationality last year, that doesn’t effect how I feel about GB, why should I have to make such a choice… The fact is that I will probably be dead if or before this is brought in, but it seems totally wrong to me.
I totally get this position, and honestly I wish one wasn’t needed. One of the biggest strengths of the British system is how ad hoc it is, and how it is built on traditions and people doing things the way they have always been done.
Unfortunately, I cannot post all of my proposed document at once, but I will say that I very much respect this and propose a non-constitution-constitution. I don’t want or belive in judicial enforcement of this document or in the courts declaring Acts of Parliament unconstitutional, but in the King being the defender and gatekeeper, and the King being held to account by Parliament.
I also think that we need something like this because we have seen just how fragile it is. Since the passing of the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1939, the Constitution of the UK has been slowly destroyed. Blair accelerated that destruction but only carried it on its natural course. You are correct, we have built this thing up over 1000 years of history. The British constitution is a living, breathing thing that has been shaped by our forebears from before the Norman invasion of 1066. However, what took 1000 years to build was almost entirely dismantled in just 100.
If politicians, let alone the general public cannot explain in full the British constitution, why it is or defend it, then we cannot hope to win. A big part, a massive part of restoring the country is restoring the constitutional settlement, and what would be the point of that if we lose office in five years and all of our restoration goes to waste?
We want to give an inheritance to our children and grandchildren of the nation we have inherited from our grandparents going back 30-40 generations. To do that, I feel that we have seen that the old constitutional settlement no longer works. We see time and time again that politicians and the like do immoral things and say that because it isn’t illegal, we should not care. We have seen in Blair and others that they don’t respect the ancient British constitution, and that they will break it when they get the chance. Sadly, we guarantee that we will always be there to stop them, so instead it behooves us to create something a little more durable that we can defend.
Our legislateur is made of 10’s if not 100’s of thousands of acts of law. The Law society of Great Britain has been trying to codify the mish mash of of missunderstanding and madness. I recommend visiting Legislation.go.uk and seeing how long it takes for you to find a contradiction, a mistake, a loophole or a total injustice.
Under all of this weight our judiciary has to somehow process our legal code, our politicians are supposed to develop effective types of improvement and our civil servants are supposed to be able to opperate the nation. The weight of the many acts are a debilitation in process. here is a very interesting response, a way to streamline the process by setting out a basic framework in order to able to streamline our legal responsibilities as a people.
