It means breaking with hundreds of years of tradition, but it can’t wait. As hard-right figures spread division and laud autocrats, a fail-safe is vital
After two years in Brazil, I felt I understood its political system better than I understand the UK’s. The reason is a short book in simple language that almost everyone owned: the constitution, published in 1988. Admittedly, I discovered the document’s limitations while trying to explain its principles to a furious captain of the military police with a pump-action shotgun. But at least I knew exactly which of my rights he was infringing.
To achieve a similar grasp of rights and powers in the UK, you’d need to be a professor of constitutional law. They are contained in a vast and contradictory morass of legal statutes, court precedents, codes of conduct, scholarly opinions, treaties, traditions, gentlemen’s agreements and unwritten rules. They are rendered still less intelligible by arcane parliamentary procedures and language so opaque that we need a translation app.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
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