Recent years have not been kind to the politics of George Monbiot. The journalist’s column records growing dismay at the inexorable march of neoliberalism, the growing list of Brexit benefits, and the West’s reluctance to disarm Israel and leave it to the tender mercies of its neighbours.
But contra Labour’s favourite party tune, things can always get worse. And faced with the prospect of Nigel Farage entering 10 Downing Street by 2029, Monbiot has come up with a canny solution. Writing in the Guardian, he has pleaded with the government to change the constitution so that the deplorables at the gate cannot implement their agenda.
The irony is that nothing smacks of despotism more than changing the rules of politics to scupper your opponents
‘We must act now: without a written constitution, Reform UK will have carte blanche to toxify our nation,’ thundered the Graun. While the headline can probably be blamed on the comment editor, it’s likely that Monbiot himself wrote that the very least Keir Starmer ‘owes us is some protection against the worst that could happen’, namely a constitution.
The cause of constitutional reform has been popular for some time, at least among politics dorks. The Liberal Democrats, whom Monbiot backed in 2010, tried to inch through the Alternative Vote, a small variation on first-past-the-post that would have factored in second preferences at the ballot box. Greens, various Celtic nationalists and Farage’s many guises have all championed proportional representation for elections on the grounds it would actually allow them to win some seats.
Other proposals include replacing the Lords with an upper chamber of University Challenge winners, lowering the voting age to anybody who has completed potty training, and offering citizenship to those who can swim the English Channel – or whatever some over-enthused youth party activist is pitching right now.
For Monbiot’s part, he has long been critical of the ‘elective dictatorship’ inherent in the British constitution, namely that a government with a comfortable majority in the House of Commons can do what it likes, up to launching an amphibious invasion of France on the slightest of Gallic provocations. As he wrote last week: ‘There are no effective limits on its actions. In a true democracy, by contrast, the people are sovereign, with fundamental rights that cannot be cancelled.’
At the risk of sounding like a failed politician’s podcast, there is a populist whiff to all this. And speaking of Alastair Campbell, Monbiot is also a critic of the sofa governments that took hold since Tony Blair’s time in office, writing that ‘parliament has seized the powers that should be vested in the people, and the prime minister has seized the powers that should be vested in parliament’.
A codified constitution could do away with all that, while also putting the rules of British democracy in one handy PDF. Much to the chagrin of any public schoolboy who has ever tried to skimp on his homework, what the British call a constitution is ‘contained in a vast and contradictory morass of legal statutes, court precedents, codes of conduct, scholarly opinions, treaties, traditions, gentlemen’s agreements and unwritten rules… rendered still less intelligible by arcane parliamentary procedures and language so opaque that we need a translation app’.
In fairness, Monbiot is not wrong about much of this. But the Guardian columnist has forgotten what constitutions are for. The world’s most celebrated set the rules of the game, not dictate who wins. While all political reform involves an element of self-interest, even bent politicians have the sense to mouth the usual pieties about representation as they redraw districts for a selectively efficient allocation of votes.
So when Monbiot pins his constitutional reform against what he expects to be ‘a blatantly authoritarian government’, it rather gives the game away. This is especially true when it’s mentioned in the same breath as wild extrapolations about Reform deputy Richad Tice’s admiration for Dubai and a hysterical suggestion about the Trumpist Project 2025 being imported into the UK.
The irony is that nothing smacks of despotism more than changing the rules of politics to scupper your opponents. Labour made no promises about constitutional reform of this kind, and given his abysmal polling figures, Starmer would be an especially unsuitable person to rewrite the fundamentals of British politics. Monbiot’s inevitable suggestion of a citizens’ assembly, an instrument always recommended with a conclusion in mind, is similarly unconvincing.
That’s without discussing what exactly a codified British constitution would have in it. Given Starmer’s enthusiasm for international law, one could expect the drabbest collection of bromides ever committed to paper, perhaps with a commitment from Richard Hermer to give away 5 per cent of our territory each year until all that’s left is Rutland.
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