An interesting article in the Independent titled:
Brown may bring in written constitution
. Britain's constitution is a non-written one, unlike America's and Australia's. Britain has non-contiguous acts which make up what would be called a constitution, but they are not in one entrenched or statutory act. A written constitution would bring Britain into line with modern constitutional practice.
A common aspect of modernising Westminster systems has been creating a unitary constitutional document. Australia went along that path with federalisation, creating an entrenched constitution. New South Wales and Victoria also have single constitution, but not with all part entrenched. Queensland and Canada have both been recent Westminster system which updated their constitutions to the Washington style (it should be noted some Greek city-states from antiquity had written constitutions, so it wasn't an American invention).
However, the Australian states of Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia all have unwritten constitutions - as does New Zealand. In fact, IIRC, Tasmania and Western Australia share a founding British Act as their first constitutional legislation.
The biggest and best known Westminster system is the British Parliament. When the British Empire decided having an agrarian empire was too costly, it started exporting responsible government to its colonies. Centralised control of America led to revolution, but local self-government, rather than colonial Naval Governorships, aided the political growth of colonies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Unwritten constitutions are largely based on convention and precedent, which means their institutions do not change much. For instance a House of Lords still appears in the British system, and due to its non-democratic nature proves to be a constant temptation for corruption - witness Blair's peerage scandal. Unwritten constitutions also build up bizarre absurdities as conventions arise organically rather than constitutional or statutory law. A good example of this is
Taking The Chiltern Hundreds
.
From the article:
The Chancellor, who will launch his campaign for the Labour leadership today, will promise to make constitutional reform a priority. He wants to bring in a "new politics" as he tries to repair the damage after Mr Blair was accused of taking Britain to war in Iraq on a false prospectus. A written constitution could spell out the respective powers of the Government and Parliament, boosting the ability of the Commons to hold ministers to account and, for example, being guaranteed a vote before military action. The blueprint could also outline the rights and responsibilities of individual citizens.Will the constitutional rigour of a single document lead to Britain having a Bill of Rights? Really; no modern constitution and and no political system that operates as a market-state is complete without one. Australia's reason for not having one is executive selfishness, the Westminster system gives way too much power to the executive and a bill of rights is negative and restrictive to government action.
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