UK Constitution

Brexit (don’t laugh) and the collapse of trust in democracy – a comparison between British chaos and Swiss glacial consensus.  Thus (from my extensive list of Things That Are Obvious to me), the need for constitutional reform in the UK.  But consider this: the British (non-) constitution is a perfectly self-sustaining system: its very nature resists any change to itself.  The type of people who are able to gain power from it don’t see any reason to change it, and there’s no democratic mechanism for popular change.  So unless there’s a war and/or a revolution, we’re stuck with it.

Recommendations for change in England/Britain

Make the House of Lords elected by proportional representation
There are too many UK constituencies; their number should be rationalised to about a third of current
Written  constitution. Interesting 2019 Reith lectures (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00060vc) in which Jonathan Sumption refutes this but does think the party duopolies need to be broken to help increase political engagement.

1. Write a constitution including stipulation that all are citizens with equal rights and responsibilities, not subjects
2. Remove Monarchy from any political position, put them into bungalows, use their palaces as museums or to house asylum seekers
3. Appoint a President elected by majority – possibly via a proportional upper house as e.g. in Switzerland or Germany
4. Regionalise government – allow tax-raising and administration of selected local rules and regulations
5. Replace the houses of lords & commons with proportionally-elected lower and upper chambers on the German or Swiss model.  Massively reduce the number of constituencies – e.g. one representative per county + a larger number up to e.g. 5 per county based on population giving (48 counties divided into 82 metropolitan/non-metropolitan) say 82 county-level representatives + 410 national representatives instead of the current 650 MPs + thousands of lords & bishops
6. Give the Scots their freedom, re-unite Ireland and give the Welsh another opportunity to decide on devolution
7. Turn the palace of Westminster into a museum and build a new, modern assembly in Birmingham (near HS2 terminal!) with electronic voting and that actually has enough speaking and office space, including provision for human needs like baby-changing
8. Take all monopolistic public services (transport, utilities) into public ownership, administered at regional level. No compensation to be paid to shareholders as they should have recognised that with profit comes risk
9. Have all resident addresses and all (individual-named) land ownership in obligatory public registers. Company-owned land and buildings to have a named, UK-resident individual as the responsible owner
10. Start negotiations to re-enter the EU including dropping the pound
11. Introduce a wealth tax on e.g. anything over GBP3M including primary residence
12. Remove charitable status and zero-VAT on private schools – and eventually ban them altogether
13. Revise planning regulations especially around green-belt building and incentivise builders & land-owners to build affordable multi-family apartment blocks around cities.  Apartments to have proper ventilation, insulation and inside-closing or tilting windows, lifts, mixer taps and heat pumps.
14. Introduce a huge vehicle excise on non-commercial vehicles over say 1 tonne unless part of farm stock i.e. Chelsea tractors – a trend usefully started in Paris
15. Recreational drug use to be decriminalised and treated as a medical issue
16. Engineer somehow the selection process for cabinet ministers so that they don’t – like Matt Hancock – suffer from either the Lake Wobegone effect or the Dunning-Kruger effect