The British Constitution

by Anthony King

In the latter part of the nineteenth century Walter Bagehot wrote a classic account of the British constitution as it had developed during Queen Victoria's reign. He argued that the late Victorian constitution was not at all what people thought it was. Anthony King argues that the same is true at the beginning of this century. Most people are aware that a series of major constitutional changes has taken place, but few recognize that their cumulative effect has been to change entirely the nature of Britain's constitutional structure. The old constitution has gone. The author insists that the new constitution is a mess, but one that we can make the best of.

The British Constitution is neither a reference book nor a textbook. Like Bagehot's classic, it is written with wit and mordant humor--by someone who is a journalist and political commentator as well as a distinguished academic. The author maintains that, while the new British constitution is a mess, there is no going back now. "As always", he says, "nostalgia is a good companion but a bad guide." Far from shying away from the thorniest issues facing the British polity today, the author grapples with them head on. He offers a trenchant analysis of the increasingly divergent relationship between England, Scotland and Wales in the light of devolution and a devastating critique of the reformed House of Lords, whose benches, the author fears, risk being adorned by "a miscellaneous assemblage of party hacks, political careerists, clapped-out retired or defeated MPs, has-beens, never-were's and never-could-possibly-be's."

The book is a Bagehot for the 21st Century - the product of a lifetime's reflection on the topic, and essential reading for anyone with an interest in the nature and future of British political life.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Law, British Literature, History

450 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 2007

About the author

Anthony King was a Millennium Professor of British Government at the University of Essex. He broadcasted frequently on politics and elections for the BBC and wrote on the same subjects for the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Observer.

Reviews

[Alec Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

In admirably clear prose, Anthony King presents his thesis directly in the opening pages: while the British constitution evolved slowly for hundreds of years, that continuity has in recent years been broken by the latest wave of changes in the late 1990s. As a result, “It is scarcely too strong to say that the constitution of the early twenty-first century bears less resemblance to the constitution of the 1960s than the constitution of the 1960s did to that of the 1860s…Parts of Britain’s constitutional edifice, including some of the most visible parts, remain intact, but the edifice as a whole is, for all practical purposes, a new building.” The bulk of the book details these changes in their man facets from the constitution of Walter Bagehot in the mid-19th century to those that occurred during the Tony Blair years (a topic sorely neglected in Blair’s own memoirs), their causes and the somewhat negative consequences (a “benign mess” that the British people can “live with”) in King’s view.

First, though, King masterfully prepares the stage with chapters covering the concept of constitutional law, his predecessors’ views on the English constitution (e.g., Bagehot, Dicey, Amery, etc.), a summary of the British constitution as it existed until the late 1990s and how it had gradually evolved for several hundred years prior, and then why the changes of the 1990s occurred. By the time the reader gets to the King’s discussion of the changes themselves, then, she’s well prepared to understand the context in which they have taken place.

The changes King discusses include the profound constitutional impact of Britain’s joining the EU, the enhanced role of the judiciary in checking Parliament and ministers, the diminished role of local government, and the devolution of authority in Scotland and Wales (and the very interesting questions it raises about the role their MPs play in Westminster). Particularly interesting to me is the rise of special, non-permanent advisors and consultants to ministers who now play roles once reserved for senior civil servants. While this is an important aspect of the American political system, what King calls the “policy bazaar,” where these new types of advisers compete with parliamentarians and traditional civil servants to influence outcomes, is a relatively new and increasingly important component of British government.

The British Constitution’s value is not limited to those who would study British politics. In evaluating what King calls the “traditional British constitution” that reigned from the mid-19th through the middle-later 20th, he describes many aspects of government and its purposes, and contrasts the British form of government with others, particularly the Dutch, when looking at how well it served them. Coupled with his opening chapter on constitutionalism generally, King has much to say about government structures generally as he evaluates how the changes to Britain’s constitution impact the values constitutional government is supposed to promote.

A very slight omission is King’s failure to discuss the role of the American President as head of state in addition the head of government when comparing it to that of the British Prime Minister. One reading note is that while The British Constitution is not a difficult book by any means, it was written primarily for students of English politics, and assumes a fairly robust working knowledge of them. Overall, though, King travails a tremendous amount of material in under 500 pages and anyone looking to understand the changes in British government in the past several decades will find it highly rewarding.

[Dmitriy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read it for my research work on British Parliament and this book really helped me out.
Especially I liked the part about House of Lords.