Part Two - Legitimation Crisis Britain - Unwritten Constitutional Slippage

Britain 2013

 Why Is the British Constitution Unwritten?

Answer

According to Ask Jeeves the archetypal English gentleman's gentleman the:-

 "British Constitution is unwritten because it has no single document which states principles and rules of a state. However, it clearly sets out how political power is allocated and where it is legally located. It also defines composition and powers of the main offices and institutions of the state."

http://uk.ask.com/question/why-is-the-british-constitution-unwritten

The Failure of the Neoliberal Political Consensus

In the first part of this blog I suggested that the cultural fabric of the countries that comprise Great Britain have been stretched thin by repeated instances of corruption and malfeasance that has invalidated the social contract upon which represenatative democracy depends. This I would suggest is a significant departure from the consensus politics of the British post-war welfare state period roughly 1945-1973, but it does represent a renewed consensus in British politics and indeed in global politics, which brings with it a whole new comstellation of contradictions.

There is of course nothing unique in Britain's current situation, it is shared to some lesser or greater degree by the wider English speaking world (the Anglosphere) and beyond it ascross many first world post-industrialised countries that are signed up to Global NATO..
On the world stage we see the clash of interest groups and hydrocarbon wars reminiscent Britain's two Opium Wars with China in the mid-19th century. Gangsterism in foreign policy is hardly a recent phenomenon, however widespread information about its machinations within the global community is certainly a 21st century development.

If there is any truth in the marxian notion that capitalism carries within it "the seeds of its own destruction" then I think that the internet holds the seeds of gangster capitalism's deconstruction and exposure as an unsustainable and ultimately doomed project. Having said that, with the exception of the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America.... in the early 21st century capitalism is a globalised if failed set of socio-economic arrangements that has delivered hardship and insecurity, famine and war to millions of people worldwide while widening the wealth gap between the tiny elite and the global populations at a price that is simply extortionate.


In 2008 the Great Crash that underlined the inherent instability of capitalism changed the world forever.

By and large both the mainstream corporate media and professional economists not only missed the significance of this cataclysmic event... but continue to remain in denial five years on. Things are changing however as the Guardian reported in October this year:-

"Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs."   http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/24/students-post-crash-economics

The article goes on to cite Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winner and professor at Princeton university who has also attacked the complacency of economics education in the US. The Guardian piece makes reference to an article for the New York Times from 2009 in which Krugman wrote:

 "As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."

That may well have been the folly of the economists but closely related to this is the folly of the politicians who have made a living out of impressive-looking mathematics if rarely it must be said are they mistaken for beauty.
The political malaise that is now confronting Britain goes much deeper than post-crash economics however, it goes to the very heart of the current legitimation crisis that affects the social fabric of this country and progressively dismantles it from within, as well as from without. During the mid 1970s German political theorist Jurgen Habermas published his book Legitimation Crisis in English [1975] (originally Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus 1973)  in which in a nutshell:-

He suggests that people expect governments to intervene successfully in the economy to try and ensure economic prosperity. Failure to succeed can cause the validity of the capitalist system to be questioned, thus undermining its legitimacy. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/legitimation-crisis#ixzz2oUX9gA2S

Mary Poppins, a Santa Clause convention?.....No its the British judiciary in action

Habermas building upon the post-marxian traditions of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory proposes a form of Systems Theory in which not only solutions are generated, but also contradictions arise from the nature of capitalism and the social relationships it creates. In Britain this is especially associated with the class system, but also has echoes in the 17th century political upheavals out of which emerged a United Kingdom which presently has no king and is increasingly disunited. Nowadays the UK stands for the Untied Kleptocracy as political devolution undermines the foundations of the failing marriage of convenience between England and the Celtic fringe, meanwhile gangsterism runs rife in the ruling establishment of bankers, landowners, media barons and Euro-Royalty. As the latter point makes clear the lands of the British archepelago are not alone in this realignment of global power and influence, but the conditions that pertain here makes the body politic more brittle than some of our continental cousins experience. Sitting at the pinacle of the long defunct British Empire means that the apex of the UK social pyramid has further to fall than in some of our neighbours, those restructuring countries of continental Europe and the former vassal states of the so-called British Commonwealth.
Britain's unwritten constitution which worked well enough throughout the repeated consensuses that have characterised British politics for more than a century, but which now fails to give us any safeguards and its vaunted flexibility has no give left in it as the British government becomes increasingly a parody of itself.

The Mother of Parliaments has become clinically obese and irretrievably demented in her dotage, her institutions are similarly bloated and confused... as we enter 2014 a cold wind of change is inflating the wind sock (or is it the support stocking?) .... on the windswept deck of Airstrip One.

Something has to change before very much longer because the situation as it pertains in England and the other countries of the British Isles is unsustainable...but no worries, it will.... in due course.