One of the lessons of the new Labour years is that constitutional reform is best avoided.
One of the lessons of the new Labour years is that constitutional reform is best avoided. New Labour swept into office with total confidence that the British constitution could be easily
‘modernised’. Its 1997 manifesto mocked the Conservatives as follows: ‘The party which once opposed universal suffrage and votes for women now says our constitution is so perfect
that it cannot be improved.’ Thirteen years later, it was clear that Labour had fallen horribly foul of the law of unintended consequences.
Rather than ‘killing nationalism stone dead’, as had been promised, devolution made Scotland seem like another country to the rest of Britain, paving the way for the SNP’s
successes there. Even Tony Blair, a politician who does not normally lack confidence, now seems uncertain on the issue. In his autobiography he says plaintively of devolution, ‘I think it was
the right thing to do. I hope it was.’
Blair’s concern is easy to understand. What was meant to be a limited reform has already led to further transfer of powers to Edinburgh. It is hard to believe that more will not follow now
that Alex Salmond has a majority at Holyrood. Devolution is starting to look like a ‘slippery slope to independence’, just as John Major predicted.
Labour’s other great constitutional reform, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into law, has upset the balance of power between the judiciary and the other branches of
government. This country’s common-law legal system is unused to the broad, Roman-law-style rights set out in the Convention. As a consequence, the Human Rights Act has proved particularly
sensitive to judicial interpretation. And this has set the stage for a constitutional clash between the executive and the judiciary.
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