Tony Blair initiated an enormous amount of constitutional change—ranging from the 1998 Human Rights Act to the devolution of substantial powers to Scotland and Wales—but, famously, he was not much interested in constitutional matters. He inherited many of New Labour’s specific pledges from his predecessors, and he delegated most of the detailed work to his first lord chancellor, Derry Irvine. But Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, is very interested in constitutional matters, and clearly intends to make constitutional change a defining theme of his administration. Indeed, his first statement to the House of Commons, in early July, dealt entirely with what the editors of Hansard chose to call “constitutional reform.”
But what does Brown understand by constitutional reform? How does he intend to bring it about? Are the specific changes he proposes desirable in themselves? Are they likely to achieve the prime minister’s own declared objectives? So unused are the British to debating large constitutional issues that these questions have so far gone largely unanswered, indeed largely unasked.
In his statement to the Commons, Gordon Brown announced a very wide range of decisions already taken by the government and proposals opened up for discussion. Depending on how one does the count, the prime minister’s list contained between two and three dozen such decisions and proposals. Most were further elaborated in “The Governance of Britain,” a green paper published jointly on the same day by Brown and his new secretary of state for justice, Jack Straw. The sheer volume of the ideas floated led one opposition MP to refer to Brown’s “encyclopedia of proposals.”
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