Thread by @Staedtler

Lord Sumption is another example of what I've always said, or as long as I can remember, that the English do not understand the fundamental concept of a constitution.

I've got nothing against Lord Sumption as it happens, but he's wrong.
Nearly everyone is wrong in England because they think they've got a constitution, and they haven't.

Like I said, nearly everyone in England thinks they've got a constitution. Maybe they just like the sound of the word. Anyway, we haven't got one, and Lord Sumption is really struggling with that.

It's all a question of whether you think a constitution is something mystical and abstract, something indefinable in the atmosphere of a country.

Or whether you think - like I do - that it's just a legal document. No more, no less.

The English don't have a constitution, so they can't understand it as a written document. otherwise they'd be wondering where this document is. The absence of it condemns them to see it as a purely abstract entity.

In fact, a constitution is nothing mystical at all. It's just a law.
Different laws have different rank, you see. And the highest rank of all is a constitution, if you've got one. We haven't, so our highest rank is an Act of Parliament.

And what Lord Sumption is struggling with - as a lot of people have struggled before - is the problem that without a constitution, in the sense of legal document of highest rank, all you've got left is whatever cultural prejudice you've got.

And oftentimes, when you drill into it, when the English talk about their "constitution" all they mean is a set of cultural habits with no more legal weight than a horoscope.