Blog post on UK Constitutional Law Blog by Mr. Colin Murray and Prof. Roger Masterman.
The ability of the constitution of the United Kingdom to respond to the ebb and flow of political and societal change has long been presented as a strength, and as one of the defining features of a system whose fundamental features have otherwise remained relatively stable. Significant renovation has occurred, but for the most part change has been incremental and, perhaps as important, relatively fragmented. Even the accelerated period of reform in the post-1997 period saw attempts to integrate change into the existing constitutional order and saw the rejection of proposals which were inconsistent with the UK’s constitutional traditions. Thus, as Jennings observed, the constitution has been ‘constantly added to, patched, and partially re-constructed, so that it has been renewed from century to century; but it has never been razed to the ground and rebuilt on new foundations’. The consequences of the referendum on EU membership may prove to be the undoing of this edifice.