Our subs sink the French deal... but we lose on land

THE FRENCH may have trashed England on the rugby field but faces are still long at the Élysée Palace and all because of something called AUKUS. It stands for Australia-UK-United States and is the new trilateral defence pact between the three English-speaking allies.

Within its ambit, and signed this very week, is the agreement that Australia, which has never had nuclear submarines, will buy its first generation from the UK. This is a multi-billion-pound deal and its signature caused Australia to cancel an agreement to acquire its first generation of nuclear subs from France. It left the French spitting tin tacks.

The Australian submarines, an offset to the growing aggressiveness of China in the southern seas, will be assembled outside Adelaide and some technology on their missiles will be American, but the pact means huge employment for UK ship yards, most of them in the Red Wall voting bloc that Rishi Sunak needs to retain to avoid being crushed in the next election.

All we have to do now is learn to play rugby again.

■ IT IS A fashionable fiction that because we do not have a written constitution like most countries, we do not have a constitution at all. Bunkum – we have one but it is different in three ways.

It is not contained in one single document. It was not written at one time in history. And it was not created by one single group of drafters and scholars. It is an amalgam of parliamentary Acts, decrees, treaties and court judgments that collectively create a true constitution.

A friend of mine with an encyclopaedic knowledge of it – a lifelong hobby – has pointed out that all taxes levied on us have to be authorised, ultimately by Parliament itself, usually in Acts which secured a majority in both Houses and then the Royal Assent.

But the Ultra-Low Emission Zone, an anti-pollution measure imposed by London mayor Sadiq Khan, has never received any such parliamentary sanction and may contravene the Bill of Rights. And it was the cry “No Taxation Without Representation” that triggered the American Revolution.

Does ULEZ constitute a form of tax? It will certainly cost many Londoners a lot of money.

It was created by a mayor elected to office, but Mr Khan never sought the people’s consent, nor that of Parliament, to this levy.

Perhaps this should be tested in court?