Dr Daniel Pitt is a Honorary Fellow at the University of Buckingham.

In 1908, Winston Churchill said “The British Constitution is mainly British common sense.”

The Labour Party it seems is determined to ensure that this is no longer the case. The late Sir Roger Scruton In England: An Elegy, writes that “nothing is better known about the English than the fact that they developed over centuries a unique political system, and then planted it around the globe.” Labour is intent of smashing this unique political system. Labour’s constitutional plans will undermine the primacy of the House of Commons, it will hand more power to judges and away from our MPs and they will further empower separatists.

The consequences do not stop there as their plans will undermine and blur accountability and worst of all they will exacerbate and create more competing legitimacies within the British State.

Kemi Badenoch has taken to criticising Sir Keir Starmer for being a lawyer, not a leader. This framing of the Labour leader is particularly pertinent to constitutional affairs. The are two broad and seemingly opposed schools of constitutionalism. One school of thought is a mainly legal point of view, and the other school of thought is a mainly political point of view.

Broadly speaking, the legal school of thought makes the case for greater judicial oversight of constitutional issues, advocating constitutional review of primary legislation and that powers should be given to the Supreme Court to enable it to strike down Acts of Parliament as unconstitutional. In other words, changing the very essence of the British constitution.

On the other hand, the political school of thought argues for greater reliance upon political forms of accountability, namely through parliament and elections rather than the Supreme Court. Indeed, accountable government can be better facilitated by leaving questions such as political questions to democratically-elected politicians rather than judges. Starmer and Labour’s unthought through constitutional plans lean decidedly to the legal school of thought. It means more political power for judges and bureaucrats.

Take Labour’s mega-councils plans.

Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, has postponed local elections in nine areas, such as Surrey, Norfolk, Suffolk and Thurrock.

For 5.5 million people local democracy has been cancelled this year.

This is being done in the name of devolution, but it is, of course doublespeak, as it is centralisation rather than devolution.

It is not a transfer of power from Whitehall to Town Hall but from bureaucrat to bureaucrat. These new mega-councils must have a minimum of half million people. These are huge ‘local’ authorities, just compare them to the current average population size for a district council which is 115,000 people. These are not designed for improvement of local governance for local people but for the efficiency of the bureaucrat. Abandoning district and borough councils to produce new unitary councils is centralisation and as it does not push power further down towards local people. Rayner is making the case that holding the local elections in these areas ‘would be an expensive and irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ money’. Funny way of looking at it as seems Rayner is arguing that elections should only be held, if they are worth the money. That is quite an anti-democratic principle to articulate.

Indeed, Starmer’s Labour administration is adding to the constitutional vandalism from when Gordon Brown left Downing Street in 2010.

They have unfinished business it seems. The House of Lords Act 1999 originally planned to completely remove the centuries-old link between a hereditary peerage and a seat in the House of Lords. However, 92 ‘excepted’ hereditary peers still sit and vote in the House of Lords. Now Starmer’s Labour are trying to finish the original process.

Removing the hereditary Peers will not improve our legislation or improve our constitution. It will make the House less independent and more in the hands of the Government. That would be bad enough, but Labour are planning further constitutional vandalism. Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledged to replace “the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber that is more representative of the regions and nations”. In December 2022, a commission chaired by Gordon Brown recommended replacing the House of Lords with a new second chamber, an ‘Assembly of the Nations and Regions’ based on “electoral legitimacy”.

Indeed, Keir Starmer backed the idea.

This would remove the Upper House as a complementary chamber to the House of Commons and replace it with a competing chamber. This would undermine the primacy of the House of Commons and create dual and competing legitimacies that would blur the line of accountability of the government to the House of Commons. Moreover, this ‘Assembly of the Nations and Regions’ is meant to safeguard and entrench devolution we are told. Devolution in its current form has blurred accountability and the devolved institutions are a platform for separatists to air their specious grievances rather than improving governance of the Kingdom. This policy will only further empower separatists.

John Hoskyns, who later become head of Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit from 1979-1982 drew a ‘wiring diagram’ to understand the British disease in the 1970s. His quip ‘a dysfunctional economy was now producing a dysfunctional society…’ is useful, but since New Labour, we need to add one more Stepping Stone because a dysfunctional constitution leads to a dysfunctional economy, and this is now producing a dysfunctional society.

The Conservatives must take this new stepping stone seriously.

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