ABSTRACT
New Labour’s constitutional plans are the legacy of an approach to power based on a deep inferiority complex about the party and about the policies we have traditionally advocated in the past. New Labour won in 1997 not because of any real programme or manifesto but because the electorate hated the Conservative Government and wanted them out. As a result Labour has a majority too big to govern with and nothing very much for it to do – particularly in the economic sphere where we have abandoned any pretence of redistribution or even of stimulating growth by demand management. Indeed, not content with taking the politics out of politics, we are taking the governing out of government, handing power to the Bank of England, to commissions of enquiry, and perhaps also to those who can be bothered to take part in referendums. As a result the Government – and the serried ranks of Labour backbenchers – have little to do apart from getting on with the business of constitutional reform.
