Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

Thursday, 3 November’s judgment was unforeseen – other than by a
few lawyers familiar with the conventions and traditions of our ‘unwritten
constitution’, a form of nudge-and-wink governance we have the
distinction of sharing in the world only with Saudi Arabia.
It is the latest and perhaps the best example of why we really need to
write our political bible, so that everyone from school children to the
Attorney General can study and understand it. It could include (most
constitutions do) a bill of rights which would be genuinely British, for
example protecting the right to trial by jury. This would fulfil an election
promise recently repeated by the Lord Chancellor.
It is anomalous that the nation of Milton, Shakespeare, Bentham and Mill
cannot put into words the way in which its government must work.
No doubt it would take time to agree a draft, which would have to be
amended by a constitutional convention and then submitted (how ironic)
to a referendum. But it would be worth the effort for the educational value
of helping people to understand, and actually take pride in how our
rights were won.
59
These rights include the power of our courts to stop the
executive (ministers and their civil servants) from using
the royal prerogative to subvert our right to live in a
representative democracy where Parliament is sovereign.
from The Independent
CIVIL
WAR?
NOVEMBER 2016