Sir, – Fintan O'Toole's ill-informed harangue against the British constitution flatters me as one of my country's"most distinguished lawyers", and so he will no doubt bear with me as I defend it ("Welcome to the United Kingdom of Absurdistan", Opinion & Analysis, August 3rd).
Britain has a political constitution consisting only partly of legal rules. The rest is based on non-legal conventions which depend for their legal force on a shared political culture that would make it politically costly to disregard them. There is nothing “absurd” or “nonsensical”, let alone “feudal”, about this, unless one thinks that only a wholly legal constitution will do.
Italy has a wholly legal constitution and yet, as Fintan O’Toole points out, Italy is a byword for political instability.
Britain may be in a bad way at the moment, but that is due to the intensity of our divisions about the EU and the choice of a method of decision-making (a referendum) designed to circumvent the political process.
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It has nothing to do with the political character of our constitution.
Constitutions deserve to be judged by more than a single crisis. The flexibility of ours has allowed it to adapt over three centuries to changes which would have overwhelmed more formal arrangements: the marginalisation of the monarchy, the onset of industrialisation and mass democracy, the existential crises of two world wars, the creation and loss of a worldwide empire and the rise of powerful modern nationalisms in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
No constitution is proof against abuse and, yes, a constitution based in part on conventions depends on respect for the conventions. But historically, they always have been respected until the arrival in Downing Street of the present bunch of constitutional hoodlums.
If parliament or the electorate makes them pay for their misbehaviour, our constitution will have been at least partially vindicated. – Yours, etc,
JONATHAN SUMPTION,
London.