A referendum would be the only way to stop a shabby Labour-led coalition from changing the way we elect our leaders

OFTEN it is said that the United Kingdom does not have a written constitution. This is not entirely true. It is written but not codified. Although it cannot be found neatly in one place, it exists in charters and Acts of Parliament drawn up over centuries.

Every schoolboy knows that King John agreed to Magna Carta in 1215. Yet most people have forgotten that the principle of ‘no taxation without representation’ long predates the American rebellion.

It is statute law, passed in 1297 during the reign of Edward I in the Act of Tallage. This is still the law of the land, requiring Parliament’s assent to tax.

Good pieces of law have survived and are settled. The 1688 Bill of Rights, the 1707 Act of Union and the 1832 Reform Bill, for instance, have all had lasting consequences. This matters because constitutions are important for prosperity.

Across the world, nations with democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and the rights of property have been, and continue to be, prosperous. Those without them may experience passing periods of wealth but these are not sustainable – as the Russian kleptocracy has discovered and as the Chinese in due course will.

Securing a well-founded constitutional settlement is the backbone of improving a country’s standards of living, and it is a constant question of politics to ensure that settlement’s survival.

The two most successful examples are the British and American constitutions, which have a different balance between flexibility and permanence, with consequences flowing from the choices each nation has made.

In the US it is extremely difficult to alter the constitution. The most recent amendment – preventing pay rises for Congress members from taking effect before the next House elections – was introduced in 1789, but not passed until 1992: a mere 203 years in gestation.

The drawback of this stability is that the judiciary is politicised. Controversial issues such as gun control and abortion are decided on by judges not politicians.

Moreover, sensible and minor changes cannot be made.

In Britain there is the opposite problem. Fundamental constitutional changes – such as voting reform or changes to the House of Lords – can be made by any incumbent government to protect its own interests without the express approval of the British people.

The 1997-2010 Labour administration made constitutional changes of profound consequences without this approval. It signed us up to the supranational concept of human rights that changes the way Parliament passes laws. It also altered the composition of the House of Lords and invented a Supreme Court.

These have had profound repercussions. For example, the electorate may be crying out for an end to – or at least some control over – the illegal migrants arriving in small boats, and for the looney tunes who stick themselves on motorway gantries to be stopped. But as a result of Labour’s constitutional changes, the police are uncertain of their powers.

Asylum-seekers may not be processed in Rwanda, despite Parliament saying that they can.

In general, the effect has been to entrench a soft-Left ideology and to make Conservative government tougher.

It is structurally harder for Rightwing governments to get legislation through because there is a Left-wing majority in the Lords. The combination of the Labour and Lib Dem peers, plus those crossbench peers who are Left-leaning, is a handicap for a Conservative administration despite its mandate from the electorate.

So how can voters stop being thwarted by the elite? How can we address the risk of a shabby coalition of Labour, Lib Dems and the SNP changing the electoral system to a form of proportional representation designed to keep the Right out of power perpetually?

The answer is more democracy, not less.

To prevent further powers being taken by ‘The Blob’ from the people, I believe that a ‘referendum lock’ should be introduced to protect the country from the kind of constitutional vandalism wreaked by the Labour government of 19972010. Such a lock, which should be introduced by the Government immediately, would mean that a small number of central constitutional tenets could be protected – and changed only if approved in a referendum.

The first tenet to safeguard is the means by which we are governed, based on how MPs are elected.

There are many advantages to our first-past-the-post system.

The constituency link is essential, as it keeps politicians in touch with those they represent, while their constituency surgeries keep them informed of what is going on in the country. The constituents remove them from the ivory tower of Westminster. But under a proportional representation system – to which a commitment was made in a vote at the Labour’s Party’s conference in September – the electorate’s role in choosing a government would be reduced.

In other countries, proportional representation either leads to fringe and extreme parties holding the balance of power or it makes change impossible.

It is less democratic, stealing power for the elite.

How Parliament is structured ought to be protected too, whether from the stipulation that there should be five years between general elections or from reform of the House of Lords.

Crucially, such changes must be decisions for voters.

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government of 2010-15 dreamt of a mechanism for Lords reform that would have put the Lib Dems perpetually in coalition. It would have given votes to that party’s peers, in an inevitably more powerful Lords, to determine the ability of any administration to get its business through.

If voters approve of such changes, that is their prerogative. But if they prefer a strong House of Commons with a revising chamber, they ought to be able to keep that instead.

In the pursuit of fairness, I believe that a referendum lock must not just be available to obstruct Leftwing

Any incumbent government can make changes to protect its own interests

It’s harder for Right-wing governments to legislate because of the Left-wing majority in the Lords

We need more democracy, not less, to prevent The Blob taking further powers

nostrums, it should also protect the status quo for those parts of the constitution that the Right wants to change.

If, for example, we were to decide to leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, that should be a decision for the electorate as a whole.

Equally, if we wanted to return the Supreme Court to the House of Lords, that, too, should be voted upon in a referendum.

Not only would this be more democratic but it would entrench the decision.

There is nothing new in seeking to protect the constitution. As Prime Minister, David Cameron introduced a referendum lock in 2011 to stop further EU integration.

In the 18th Century, it was the job of the Crown to protect the constitution; in the 19th Century it was the job of the House of Lords. In the 20th Century it was no one’s – although the famous Victorian constitutionalist A. V. Dicey, who lived to 1922, argued that proper provision should be made.

Dicey was the most authoritative advocate of parliamentary sovereignty but he thought that the voters’ rights needed protecting by referendums.

The threat of an elective dictatorship can be realised only if politicians have unlimited power to change the terms of their own power themselves.

To prevent that, the people’s interest must be preserved, and a referendum lock is the way to do it.