What do the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, China, Japan, Indonesia, Brazil and all African countries have in common?
The answer is, they were all constituted in their present shape much later than Great Britain.
This now familiar nomenclature came into being in 1706 and 1707 when the Parliaments of England and Scotland passed the Acts of the Union, joining the two kingdoms into one.
The two crowns united a century earlier, when James VI of Scotland became James I, King of England and Ireland, in what was known as the Union of the Crowns. The political union of 1707 merely recognised the status quo, as in those backward days monarchy was still taken seriously.
This brings us to the c-word, as in ‘constitution’, and shame on you for thinking I had something else in mind.
This word is slipping out of the vocabulary of public discourse as fast as the masculine possessive pronoun. The two words are worth keeping, ‘his’ for cultural and aesthetic reasons, ‘constitution’ because most political debate should both begin and end with it.
Americans, proud of their 1789 Constitution (since then amended 27 times, as one has to remark with a bit of Schadenfreude), like to point out that Britain has no constitution, by which they mean no single written document. This is ignorant nonsense.
When Salic Law was debated in France, its opponents were invoking a similar argument. “Where is it written?” they kept screaming. “Salic Law,” replied the great constitutional thinker Joseph de Maistre, “is written in the hearts of Frenchmen.”
I’d suggest that if a constitution isn’t written in that organ, any written document will be useless. And if it’s indeed written there, any written document will be redundant. In fact, a written constitution is like a prenuptial agreement stipulating the frequency of sex: if you have to write it down, you might as well not bother.
The Acts of the Union were written both in the hearts of the two fraternal peoples and on paper. And now politicking on the part of the SNP and its fanatical leader Alex Salmond is threatening to destroy the constitution of Great Britain.
The amazing thing is that both the opponents and proponents of devolution are arguing this issue of cosmic constitutional import on all sorts of trivia – without ever mentioning the c-word.
The debate seems to revolve around the fiscal impact of devolution on an average Scottish family. The two sides are about £2,400 apart: one lot claim the Scots will be £1,400 a year richer, the other that they’ll be £1,000 poorer.
Even considering the legendary parsimony of the Scots, surely they must realise that such matters oughtn’t to be decided on a few pennies here or there.
To be fair, they aren’t the only ones. Money seems to be the crux of the matter even when the Brits argue about an infinitely more vital constitutional issue: that of the country’s membership in the EU.
Those who favour this abomination claim that our economic survival depends on tearing our ancient constitution to shreds, with Her Majesty becoming just another citizen of the EU. When I say that even if this were true – and it isn’t, not by a long chalk – I’d still be opposed on purely constitutional grounds, the federasts look at me with touching concern for my mental health.
In fact, it’s their heads that need examining: taking the constitution out of our body politic is like amputating the skeleton from a man’s body. Everything else will collapse and the body will die.
The issue of devolution is bogus from beginning to end. It’s not as if the Salmonds of this world felt that Scotland would be better off if she fended for herself.
Quite the opposite, the intention is to swap the historical union with England and Northern Ireland for that of the EU, where Scotland will enjoy a great deal less independence – and, incidentally, much smaller handouts.
In fact, the primary force behind the current devolution drive came not from Alex Salmond but from Mel Gibson, who brought to his awful film Braveheart the same burning passion he expresses privately through anti-Semitic rants.
Every Englishman featured in the film is a sadistic villain torturing, raping and murdering heroic, selfless Scots. The subversive potential of such films was first pointed out, with grateful appreciation, at the dawn of cinematography by Lenin, who described it as “the most important of all arts”. Important to rabble-rousing, that is.
Amazingly, even some conservative, which is to say intelligent, Englishmen often say “We’ll be better off without them”. They cite things like the predominance of the Labour vote in Scotland, which is usually the only factor swinging general elections the Labour way. (Even their saintly election winner Tony ‘Anthony’ Blair was solidly beaten in England in each general election he won.)
Or else they point out the enormous cost to the Exchequer of maintaining Scotland’s social handouts, which are higher than anywhere else in the UK. Effectively this amounts to income redistribution from England, mainly her South, to Scotland, something no conservative can countenance.
All true, all trivial. The economic argument is particularly weak: it’s not as if the English taxpayer will benefit if Scotland leaves the Union. Our own dear government, whichever party will form it, will find other ways of wasting our money up the wall (the idiom isn’t quite precise, but my wife says I mustn’t use in writing the same horrid language I use in speech).
The political argument fails on the same general principle: the difference between today’s Tory and Labour parties is that between a calamity and a disaster. We choose not so much the lesser of two evils as the evil of two lessers.
Obviously, the advent of Labour would be more catastrophic but, even so, I’d still insist that the devolution argument shouldn’t stand or fall on party politics.
Like no other nationhood, Britishness – and Englishness – is defined by the country’s constitution. Take it away, and it’s not just the national politics but the national character that will be dealt a mighty blow from which it may not recover.
The Scots too would be well-advised to recall the c-word more often – and not just the one they use when talking about the English.