I’ve long been in favour of a written constitution to protect England from the ravages of successive governments. I therefore support the thrust of the LibDem’s announcement today.
Liberal Democrats today make clear our view that a written constitution for the United Kingdom should not only include the rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights but also an explicit guarantee of the independence of judges in Britain from political attack or interference.
But I find it difficult, despite my claim to be liberal, to support this:
in recent years David Blunkett, more recently John Reid, and worst of all the Prime Minister have attacked our judges for doing their job…
Despite Mr Hughes’ undoubted good intentions, it stinks to me of the Liberal Democrat propensity to favour criminals over victims.
When our government attacks judge’s decisions they are often wrong in the strictest sense to blame the judges. It is, in truth, the fault of our prescriptive centralised government that judges cannot give the sentence they would like for a particular crime.
But the fact that Blunket et al recognise that sentencing should be tougher is a hell of a lot more reassuring — for its naivete — than the Hughes position which is that the sentencing handed down by judges is appropriate and even, in some cases, overly harsh.
If you think I am applying stereotypes consider the LibDem position on voting from prison. While the vast majority of Britons believe that prison is more about punishment than about realistic rehabilitation (because it has been shown over many years that prison cannot rehabilitate) the LibDems believe that we should not restrict prisoner’s liberty. Give them the vote, they say.
A constitution, then, must be drawn up so extremely carefully as to be beyond partisanship.
Update: If the white bars on the left of the quotations on this post obscure the following paragraph, use Firefox.
. You can pre-order it too.
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