Tony fixes the constitution

摘要

Not since Harold Macmillan's night of the long knives 40 years ago in which he sacked nearly half his cabinet has a reshuffle been such a spectacular disaster. Tony Blair, summoned to the Commons this week, did his best to defend himself. But not even his considerable parliamentary skills could hide the fact that the exercise, meant to bolster his government by modernising it, had been a shambles. Taken on their own, the constitutional reforms were not especially contentious. Sensible people have long been arguing for getting rid of the Lord Chancellor's job, on the grounds that the top law officer's position as a cabinet minister and head of the House of Lords as well as the judiciary undermines the idea of judicial independence. For the same reason, extracting the country's top judges from the House of Lords and setting them up in a Supreme Court seems a good idea. And, since Scotland and Wales got their own parliaments, the government jobs looking after them have needed downgrading.