Andy Burnham has used his first fortnight in Downing Street to test how far a prime minister can push change without new legislation. He has floated regional tax powers, weighed a Council Tax overhaul frozen since 1991, and now signalled support for something far bigger, a written constitution.
Britain remains one of the few countries governed without a single founding text, relying instead on statutes, common law and convention built up over centuries. Gordon Brown raised the idea two decades ago, and a parliamentary review concluded in 2015 that no consensus existed for codifying it. Burnham served as a minister under Brown and now revives an argument that has never found a majority willing to carry it through.
A Promise With A Long History
Calls for codification are not new in British politics, and each earlier attempt stalled at the same point, agreement on content.
Burnham frames his devolution programme, which lets every English region become what he calls a strategic authority, as the trigger for a wider settlement. He has pointed to how regions such as Greater Manchester pay disproportionately more tax relative to property values than London does, a grievance he wants folded into constitutional principle rather than left to piecemeal statute over the coming years.
Devolution As A Testing Ground
His plan treats devolution as a testing ground for the larger question. Local government would gain a constitutional right to exist, instead of depending on permission from Westminster, and every nation and region would receive guaranteed minimum standards for public services.
Campaigners including Republic, the group that opposes the monarchy, have already seized on the opening. Chief executive Graham Smith has said any serious debate about a written constitution needs to let the public follow the argument to its natural conclusion. Burnham has given no sign he intends to touch the monarchy itself.
Post-Brexit Parliament Lacks Consensus
Brexit altered Britain’s relationship with Brussels and left Parliament far less able to agree on constitutional fundamentals. The 2016 referendum exposed splits inside both main parties that persist years later, and support for smaller parties, including Reform UK, has fractured the working majority any government can rely on.
Codifying a constitution needs sustained cross-party agreement, precisely the ingredient Brexit consumed. Labour’s own majority looks fragile enough that Burnham may struggle to pass ordinary legislation, let alone a settlement requiring buy-in from opposition benches and the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.
What Getting There Would Require
Any serious attempt would need years of public inquiry, a drafting convention and probably a referendum to grant it legitimacy comparable to other democracies. The constitutional reforms of the late 1990s, which created devolved parliaments, took the better part of a decade and left England itself among Europe’s most centralised nations still.
Burnham inherited a party bruised by local election defeats and a country still absorbing the economic costs of leaving the European Union.
Voters weighing whether to trust him with rewriting the rules of government may reasonably ask why a struggling administration should also carry the most demanding constitutional project in generations.
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