The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

The British constitution matters. Its observance is crucial to the well-being of all our people, to every state activity and deployment of government power. It is fundamental to sustaining the decencies of British public and political life. These in turn are crucial to the face our society presents to itself and, therefore, to the culture, character, calibre, and influence of our nation. Yet mechanisms for the upholding of constitutional principles in the United Kingdom are deficient and require an overhaul, argue Blick and Hennessy. The experience of Boris Johnson’s premiership between 2019 and 2022 provides the focus for their exploration of this subject. Blick and Hennessy analyse the pre-existing vulnerabilities that Johnson exposed in the UK system of government, ending with a series of proposals to repair the damage done and to prevent a repetition of this anxious episode in our political history.