Runnymede Institute

Knees knock and torsos tremble in Westminster these days, teeth clack in chatter at the thought of having to roll back only a few of the thousands of laws enacted since 1999. At the deck bar of The Yacht on the other hand, cautious celebrations are in the air. The source of this impasse isn’t some crusading politician pitching a re-branded British version of Hope and Change, it’s none other than the dashing Lord Mereworth, 81 years young and linked to a fragrant muse of 28, if the papers are to be believed.

Violations of the UK Constitution have brought things to a head and to such a degree that the best laid plans of the coalition are best forgotten here and now. The Police State New Labour law-writing rampage ran out of steam at 4289 pecadillos that must be discarded. The short version of this nearly decade long ping pong match by post is that Mereworth challenged ministers to demonstrate how they can legally interfere with “letters patent” and hereditary peerages to grant new powers to themselves and then foist those on the British public. That’s nothing like, it is the tail wagging the dog.

In layman’s terms, the Queen is now being undermined and every new government’s encroachment on the lives of the people is facilitated by a basic misunderstanding of the Law. A brilliant article by Hugh O’Donoghue; Abolition of the House of Lords and Other Reforms : A British Republic?, will set one pondering what sort of future we’re in for when the main power brokers are at times quite literally in bed with the top fraud merchants of the day and we have no recourse or protection under ‘their’ new rules;

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A final curtain descended on Britain’s Law Lords’ in July 2009, the sad but inevitable sequel to a series of measures, ushered in by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. In their place the UK has a new Supreme Court, which opened for business at the beginning of October.

The recently sworn Justices have taken up occupancy of the Middlesex Guildhall. a limestone building with a mock baronial facade and art deco touches, the lines of which as I discuss later, run parallel to the more abstract architecture of the new court’s philosophy. The supreme court remains in Westminster but has moved across Parliament Square to it’s fabulously revitalised new home. Read More