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MAY May and her dwindling band of loyalists raged at what they saw as Bercow’s manipulations of Erskine May. Her detractors, meanwhile, felt embarrassed at being rescued by a bolt from the blue summoned up by one man’s whim: they understood why Merkel would take the Mickey. British liberals have long yearned to rationalise the far-flung pieces of parchment and vellum, as well as all the half-forgotten precedents on which our governance often rests (see overleaf). The Brexit crisis ought to be the moment that finally chivvies us into getting around to it. These somewhat farcical events do not, however, make the case for change self-evident. It needs to be argued for—and with subtlety. Because for all the shambling in the Commons that day, a pathologically stubborn prime minister, who had in effect tried to reduce politics to a staring competition, had been checked, balanced and brought down a peg or two. Within days, she was talking about when she’d quit. Checking brute power is what constitutions are supposed to do. If quirky old Britain achieves it in a way that also apparently makes for cult viewing in California, then where’s the harm in that? Would exposing or tidying up the hidden wiring that connects our disparate constitution have led to better governance through the Brexit emergency, or more generally? LESSON FROM AMERICA There is a lot in the argument—which Adam Tomkins presses against Sionaidh Douglas-Scott on p26—that writing down the ground rules in one neat document does not guarantee reasonable argument or fruitful debate. What are the ideal conditions for creating a constitution? You’d obviously want a blank slate—in other words, a new country. You’d want a deep well of ideas to draw on, ideally from polymaths like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. And you’d want brilliant draftsmen, ensuring every line counted and cohered: James Madison and Alexander Hamilton spring to mind. It was with these extraordinary advantages, few of them available to Britain today, that the Founding Fathers were able to create the framework for American governance using roughly as many words as this article. Elegant and durable, it is treated with religious reverence at home, and regarded as the paradigm worldwide. And yet, America is today more dysfunctional than anywhere in western Europe, including Brexit Britain. Today those celebrated checks have made government shutdowns routine, and created what Francis Fukuyama calls a “vetocracy,” where all sides can stop anything happening, and nobody can get anything useful done. Even before Washington lapsed into today’s poisonously partisan culture, fundamental 20th-century reforms had to be rendered from ingenious reinterpretations of 18th-century propositions: legal abortion continues to rest on a right to privacy, which itself was conjured out of a clause about something else; civil rights relied on some bright spark insisting that smooth “inter-state commerce” required them. The displacement of politicians by smart-alec lawyers is arguably not an improvement, even if it isn’t as obviously absurd as Bercow’s bellowing. It may have the orderly minimalism of Marie Kondo’s home, but America’s constitution has become a prison. Amending it is so difficult it has not been done in 27 years, and not meaningfully in nearly 50. Times change and arguments evolve, and so it is—as the late Bernard Crick warned—unwise to presume you can put power relations and rights “above politics.” At the very least, aspiring British constitutionalists should seek to build in more flexibility than the Americans. “The last few months of Brexit chaos have exposed the frightening frailty of orderly governance and individual rights” Nor should they worry too much about getting absolutely everything into one crisp document. The US president’s appointment of Supreme Court justices, and their confirmation by the Senate, makes for a tidy organogram, but—even when US politics is functional enough to fill the bench—it produces a politically compromised judiciary. By contrast, the opaque ways by which the English judiciary replenishes itself are mysterious and less democratic in theory, but in practice work far better. By this point, you may be beginning to feel the temptations of the conservative argument against change. Rather than coming up with a new paper solution that might not work, wouldn’t it be better to work with Britain’s sprawling, tried and tested constitutional inheritance? After all, recent history is littered with piecemeal reforms—the steady growth of judicial review, the Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information—through which the constitution has evolved to the good, without being entirely recast. Not long ago, I might have bought that line. The last few months of Brexit chaos, however, have exposed the frightening frailty of both orderly governance and individual rights. The long story of this country can sometimes incline to complacency. Its latest chapter, however, should put the case for radical surgery beyond argument. The point is not the merits or otherwise of leaving the EU, but the shambolic and at times dangerous way in which this profound change has been attempted. In most democracies, an overhaul this fundamental would have required super-majorities in parliament or the country, and very often for some account to be taken of the views of devolved legislatures, too. In Britain, none of this was required. The traditional argument for the absence of constraints is that it allows for clarity. Today, however, not even the keenest

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