Brown’s constitutional

Stand by for a huge constitutional debate: that was one of many messages to be drawn from Gordon Brown’s launch this morning. Asked whether his plans included a written constitution, he would only say that he favoured a “better constitution”. But there was an explicit promise to curb the Crown prerogative, make Parliament more powerful, submit certain government appointments to parliamentary oversight, and (less overtly) entrench citizens’ rights and responsibilities in some way. Gordon left us is no doubt that he is thinking big. To make sense of it all, check out this excellent section of the openDemocracy website. It is the brainchild of Anthony Barnett, founder of Charter 88 and author of This Time, one of the best books on the case for constitutional change around, written when New Labour was still New but still relevant – arguably more than ever.