University 18 Yrs + | Constitutional Change

Introduction

Professor Peter Hennessy, one of our leading writers on the British Political system, tells the story that the Queen was visiting his university, Queen Mary College in East London, on the day that he was giving his lecture to his politics students on the British Constitution.

The Queen asked to sit at the back of the lecture and listened quietly. At the end of the lecture the Queen came up to him and said, “Very interesting, Professor Hennessy, but the British Constitution has always been confusing and always will be!”.

If our Head of State finds the British Constitution a problem, then it is not surprising that the rest of us do but in the following sections will explain how our unwritten constitution works, and how it affects politics. The considerable constitutional change since 1997 will be explained.