Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Lord Falconer and the Constitution.

Lord Falconer is a distinguished legal mind and an authority on the Constitution. He was responsible for enabling the very significant constitutional reform giving the country the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Court. He now wishes to delay the passage through the Lords, and therefore the implementation, of the Constitutional Reform Bill.

This Bill, like so much other modern legislation, is  somewhere between a bodge and a fudge constructed to the lowest common denominator of politicians who are fundamentally in disagreement on the issue. It has, however, been passed by the Commons and for all its imperfections will make our democracy a good deal fairer and better than it is. It is therefore to be applauded. Delay would be a mistake. The people must be given the opportunity to have their say in a Referendum on an improved voting system.

In fact as Lord Falconer and everyone in Westminster knows, there is absolutely no constitutional need for a referendum and this disgraceful and expensive ploy was devised as a sop to the Tory right wing, which hopes the referendum will be lost. There is no reason whatever why the AV voting reform could not simply pass through Parliament like every other reform of the voting system or the constitution thus far in the history of England. Indeed like the Supreme Court.

This is why we need to establish a written Constitution like every other country in the world, save only ourselves, Israel and new Zealand. When it written down for all to see and understand, it cannot be made up, manipulated and generally tinkered with by those who are supposed to defend it. The Constitution should not be the property of the Monarch, Parliament or the Establishment. It is, and in our case must become, the property of the People.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Malcolm Blair Robinson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.