New Labour and the Rise of the New Constitutionalism

Abstract

Unlike Margaret Thatcher Tony Blair was no conviction politician but he was a committed pragmatist driven by the desire to reverse the Labour Party’s electoral fortunes and replace the Conservative Party as the natural party of British government. Nowhere is this better illustrated than constitutional reform. He possessed a keen analysis of Britain’s constitutional dilemmas in a post-Thatcherite world but with the exception of those areas where there was a ready-made solution he was less certain about what needed to be done (Giddens, 2007). The main dilemma he confronted was that the essence of the constitutional crisis his government inherited was the product of the sovereignty of parliament which afforded untrammelled powers to the executive as long as it was able to discipline its majority. It was impossible, however, given the constraints of the British political tradition, to mitigate the sovereignty of parliament except through the constitution of a new sovereign. To do so would be federalism and federalism would inevitably constitute a radical assault on both English interests and his own powers as Prime Minister. This strategic paradox remains the fault line for understanding constitutional reformism in the Blair era, the contestation between centralism and reform and Blair’s governing style.

The old constitution is dissolving beneath our eyes. The only question is what will replace it. To that question the authors of the revolution have no answer.

(Marquand, 2000: 269)