“Our constitution is full of curious oddities, which are impeding and mischievous, and ought to be struck out,” wrote Bagehot. What was true in the 19th century is just as true today
! Slow march!” Like a deck of cards come to life, the Yeomen of the Guard slowly entered Westminster Hall. Two by two they shuffled into the 12th-century building at precisely 10.03am, just as the schedule demanded, medals jangling with each step. On each side of the room,s, cabinet ministers, lords, journalists , clerks and flunkies watched them go.
It was a scene that Walter Bagehot, a former editor of this newspaper, would have recognised. His short text, “The English Constitution”, has proved one of the most enduring on the topic. Writing about the constitution is tricky. “The difficulty is that the object is in constant change,” wrote Bagehot. The constitution that Bagehot first described in 1865 was completely superseded by 1922, never mind the realities of 2022. The constitution is a moving target.
King Charles would do well to reread him. It is, argued Bagehot, the job of the monarch to be boring and, even better, slightly thick. Prince Charles was far too interesting. He wrote a peculiar book of political philosophy that hailed sacred geometry, the red squirrel, Islamic art and Malthusianism and attacked modern architecture, the scientific revolution and the concept ofBagehot argued that the monarchy needed mystique.
Gentle affection for the monarch is as deep as thinking runs on the topic. A strength of the constitution was that it had, in Bagehot’s words, “a comprehensible element for the vacant many, as well as complex laws and notions for the inquiring few”. Bagehot was not an enthusiastic democrat. Yet monarchy evolved from a showpiece for the “vacant many” into an apolitical symbol of the nation in its democratic era. A lack of political imagination keeps it there.
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