Dr Daniel Pitt is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Buckingham.
As a party, we need to have a coherent policy suite to restore the British constitution. Last month, my new book, The Conservative Party and the constitution: Policies, paradigms and silence was published. One of the conclusions in the book is, to put it both simply and mildly, that the Conservative Party, since 1997, has had difficulty in dealing with constitutional affairs.
The Conservative Party has been and has to be again the natural protector of our historic constitution.
The great Benjamin Disraeli famously said, “The programme of the Conservative Party is to maintain the Constitution of the country.” Disraeli was right then and he is right now.
Yet, the Conservative Party has lost its way when it comes to constitutional issues. When I was researching the book, I had many informal chats about the topic. Some people argued that “you don’t win elections on constitutional issues”, or the “general public doesn’t care about the constitution”, or that “it is not a bread and butter issue”.
In a facile way, these statements are true. But in reality, they ignore the true complexities involved. In fact, conservatism, our very own political philosophy, is a historical product of constitutional traditions.
These types of statements also ignore the fact that politics is complex, and there are at least two different kinds of what we might call ‘politics’.
In the politics of electioneering, which is the realm of political strategy, campaigning, slogans and policy creation, constitutional affairs are not the ‘bread and butter’ issues at the national level in the way that, say, economics and immigration are.
But the politics of electioneering is not the only type of politics in town. There is also the politics of governance. If we want the next Conservative administration to focus on sound economics, support a cultural renewal and play its part in creating and growing flourishing families and local communities, it will have to address the fundamental problems with the British constitution in its current post-Blair state.
A sound economy is not achievable without sound government machinery.
The core problem with the British constitution is that it has undergone multiple botched surgeries since the 1970s – especially after 1997. Yet, Andy Burnham plans more of the same.
These constitutional surgeries have not been a success. They have been contradictory, ragbag, and discrete changes that have not been in line with our constitutional heritage and traditions.
We must, therefore, fix our constitutional discontent.
Conservatives are in favour of constitutional reform when there is a proven grievance, and there are many proven grievances in the post-Blair British constitution.
Are our constitutional woes purely down to a lack of individual talent? We just need better politicians – or are our woes due to the botched structural reforms that we have seen since New Labour?
In truth, it is a bit of both.
We need politicians who understand their country’s constitutional tradition and how our system of government works, but we also need to reform our constitutional structures and institutions because politicians have to work within them. Moreover, our constitutional culture shapes both the individuals and our institutions. Thus, recommitting ourselves to our culture of constitutionalism is paramount.
We must reject the mirage of a ‘constitutional Utopia’, for no constitution will ever be perfect, as no human construction is. What we must do is recover what we have lost in our British constitution – rather than introduce new constitutional devices. It needs to be an act of recovery and repair, and not a revolution.
Devolution has blurred accountability with the current constitutional framework, and there are now competing legitimacies within the British state because of it.
The current structure of the Civil Service and the quango-state has created great inefficiencies in the functioning of the state. Not only is the quango-state too big, it is not accountable either.
There is an erroneous balance in the relationship between the branches of government, and accordingly, power is in the wrong hands. Broadly speaking, we must put constitutional power back into the hands of our politicians and out of the hands of bureaucrats.
More devolution or moving half of No 10 Downing Street to Manchester is not the answer. There is a big hole in the centre of government. This has meant that governments have been inefficient at implementing their own policy programmes.
Power has ebbed away to international treaties, such as the ECHR, to the Supreme Court, to quangos and to Town Hall bureaucrats. This means that Government Ministers are rowing the ship of state hard, all whilst having fewer means of steering it.
Under previous management, the Conservative Party has struggled with joined-up constitutional policies because they are formulated in siloes.
This is partly because of the way the Conservative Party creates policy – they are portfolio-led, and this does not work for constitutional issues, as they fall under, for instance, the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Local Government, Cabinet Office and others.
The way the party formulates policy does not have a negative effect on other policies as it does on constitutional issues.
The party must test constitutional policies by asking principled constitutional questions. The party should test constitutional policies against these types of questions: Does the policy allocate the constitutional power in the right hands? Does this policy create the ‘right’ relationship between our branches of government? Does this constitutional policy allow the government to govern and respect citizens’ liberties?
Addressing the shortcoming in recent Conservative constitutional policy-making in recent times is absolutely paramount if Kemi Badenoch’s administration is going to be a successful one.