The heyday of majoritarian democracy (1945– 67)

There was a time when belief in the wisdom and greatness of the ‘British Constitution’ was an uncontroversial assumption of political life. The generation now at or near retirement age was born and socialized into a system of government that was almost axiomatically good. It might have been littered with strangely archaic titles, rules and rituals, all opaque to the uninitiated, but it worked. It delivered government that was stable and effective, responsive and responsible, honest and capable. It could win world wars and build the National Health Service. It could defeat Nazis and slumlords with equal vigour. It was encased, of course, in a persistent class system of status and privilege, but there was a prevailing sense of public duty and mutual obligation that tied those at the top to those at the bottom. The civil service was generally competent and honest, the justice system fair and reliable, and corruption a foreign concept. The two main political parties (who between them comfortably won more than 90 per cent of the votes at every election) represented different classes and interests, but were both committed to full employment, the cradle-to-grave welfare state, and rising living standards.

With quietly-spoken triumphalism, the dominant constitutional narrative celebrated Britain's long democratic evolution, beginning with the Magna Carta and proceeding through milestones such as the Glorious Revolution and the Great Reform Act, until it reached its perfect conclusion. It was fair game to disagree with this government or that party, to think that the Prime Minister was doing a bad job, or to object to particular policies, but the essential soundness – indeed the brilliance – of the system as such was practically unassailable.

This was not an altogether unreasonable view. The constitutional difficulties that are now so apparent had not yet surfaced. There was no Welsh Assembly or Scottish Parliament. The Northern Irish Parliament existed, but few in Great Britain gave that lonely province a moment's thought. The House of Lords, defanged by Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, appeared to do no harm; rendered ever so slightly more meritocratic by the Life Peerages Act 1958, perhaps it did a little good. The First Past the Post electoral system – despite an anomalous result in 1951, when the Labour Party won more votes but the Conservatives won more seats – seemed to deliver decisive and responsible government.