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There are good precedents for legal historians complaining about constitutional dangers, most notably John Selden, whose name would need no commendation to the founders of this Lecture. But he lived in an age when history provided live ammunition in defence of the liberty of the subject and constitutional monarchy. That kind of legal history is no longer of any forensic value in this country. My concerns in 2009 were rooted in very recent history, and came into focus after the inept announcement by Mr Blair on 12 June 2003 that he had abolished the office of Lord Chancellor, apparently without consulting anyone outside his own circle. 4I am going to confine my remarks to the brief period since then, although there is a good case for regarding the progressive surrender of autonomy to the European Union, and the various experiments with inland devolution and local government, as beginning a major constitutional revolution well before 2003 and as raising concerns at least as troubling as those on which I shall be concentrating. 5
When I delivered a public lecture in 2004 on 'The Constitutional Revolution',6one of my chief complaints was that grave changes were occurring almost daily without much public notice being taken. Several years on, I can hardly complain of a complete lack of publicity - at least for those sufficiently well informed, and with sufficient leisure, to search the Internet regularly for the appropriate keywords. But I have come to the conclusion that the problems which I tried to identify in 2004 have deepened, and that the 'revolution' which I then addressed in somewhat pejorative terms is not to be identified with the 'constitutional renewal' that the Government has proudly announced. In fact, there is such a gulf between the public statements of the Government and its actions that one might be forgiven for thinking that the language of 'renewal' is more rhetoric than reality, another form of 'spin'. 7
It is admittedly difficult to separate constitutional matters from matters of political judgment. I am not sure that ministerial incompetence, arrogance, inefficiency, excessive centralisation or over-regulation can properly be regarded as unconstitutional, except in the sense that it is generally beyond the power...