Thread by @timoconnorbl

A note on happenings across the water of late.

I live and practice in a parliamentary democracy where a written Constitution is supreme. The UK is a system of Parliamentary supremacy (technically, the Crown in Parliament, but, lookit) without a written constitution.

And one may prefer one model over the other. I prefer ours, as it happens. But one may choose either, and the UK’s has, in fairness generally muddled along pretty okay.

But now?

In the last week or so, there’s been the UKSC deciding obiter dicta it knows better than legislators what the voters want; Parliament not supreme but bound by a referendum in a past parliament; Parliament deciding not to have a say over the executive but let it loose unfettered..

Oh, and people walking out of Parliamentary committees because they felt like it.

So, what system is it? Parliamentary supremacy? Judicial control? Executive control? One popular vote nearly two years ago that seemingly now binds all future parliaments?

I honestly do not know. I doubt anyone can say with true certainty. Scots constitutional lawyers are brawling like there was the last bottle of full-sugar Irn-Bru at stake over a Sewel convention that nobody is even sure is broken.

So far as I can tell, UK constitutional structures at the moment aren’t just mixed, they’re scrambled. Brexit is a universal solvent, and all the previous structures are crumbling and mingling in it.

And that cannot be a sustainable state of affairs.

Whatever happens with Brexit, the UK is going to have to clarify constitutional structures in a way it’s not done since the Home Rule crisis. The uncertainty, muddle and drift where nobody is truly sure who has what powers under what limits cannot continue.

Thing is, I’m uncertain on the evidence of the mess today there is the requisite appetite or expertise to carry out the exercise of picking one system, clarifying it and sticking with it. I am, however, certain Victorian theories aren’t descriptive of the reality any more.

So: who controls whatever may be eventually taken back?