If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's been the rallying cry of the defenders of our ancient, unwritten constitution through the ages - if not always in those words. Sure, say the old guard, our patchwork quilt of unspoken custom and tacit tradition may not make logical sense when set out on a clean sheet of paper - that's one good reason why we keep it unwritten. But, insist the keepers of the flame, our non-systematic system has held up just fine for centuries. So long as it still works, there's no need to change it. The trouble is, that's no longer true. The system is not working: it is broke - and we need to fix it. For the test of any constitution is the quality of governance it produces. In just the last few years we have seen all too clearly how well our system works: from the great pension scandal of the mid-1980s to the BSE calamity of the 1990s, from the outbreak of sleaze to the sell-off of our railways, from the poll tax to the debacle of the Dome - the proof is all around us of a standard of government that is just not good enough. In each case the system did not contain the checks and balances, the basic scrutiny, that might have weeded out bad legislation and prevented disastrous mistakes.  This cannot be the exclusive fault of this administration or that individual politician. It happens too often for that. Rather, as both the Scott inquiry into the arms-for-Iraq affair or the Phillips report on BSE concluded, the flaw lies in the system itself - the way we are governed. And that means our constitution.  The British people woke up to this fact long ago, even if few dare say it. Polling data consistently show a decline in esteem for our institutions and the system which links them together. While 48% expressed "quite a lot of confidence" in the House of Commons in 1985, that figure had halved by 1995. A year later a European Union poll found that Britons had less faith in their parliament than the people of any member country bar Portugal. Local government's standing has never been weaker, with turnout in council elections dropping like a stone. Trust in our institutions is in freefall, with the young especially disenchanted. One Mori survey found 71%of first-time voters convinced their ballot would "make little or no difference to their lives". We are beginning to vote with our feet - by staying away from the polling station. Britain's turnout figures are in decline, with recent by-elections lucky to involve more than 30% of the vote. In one Leeds seat, the turnout fell below one in five of all registered voters. It all adds up to a growing loss of faith in our system of governance.  These trends are not wholly new: reformers have seen the need for a radical overhaul of our constitution for decades. But now there is an extra urgency. For not only is the old system not working well: it is beginning to come apart. Since 1997 Labour has undertaken a raft of constitutional changes so radical they have historians reaching for the 1830s to find a precedent. Whether it's the rolling programme of devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or the partial reform of the House of Lords, the current government has shattered forever the traditionalist belief that our system is a frail, mystical thing that belongs in a glass case and can never be touched by human hand. The conservative conviction that the constitution has remained unaltered for centuries - and therefore cannot be changed in future - is gone. The patchwork quilt can be repaired and even renewed: after all, it's unravelling already.    <B> Four nations</B><BR>  Specifically, Labour's changes have exposed to the light questions that had long been buried - and which now demand to be answered. Take devolution. Until 1997 Britain had never really come clean about its true nature as a multi-national entity: the four constituent nations each had their own cabinet department, but Britain was essentially a unitary state governed from Westminster and Whitehall. Devolution has blown that apart.  It has forced us to recognise that there are distinct countries within Britain, each with the right and ambition to govern itself - whether through a parliament in Edinburgh or assemblies in Cardiff and Belfast. The days of crypto-federalism seem to be over: thanks to devolution, Britain has acted like a country ready to come out as a federal entity.  But not completely. For Labour's decentralisation may have brought to the surface a clutch of dilemmas about Britain, but it has not resolved them. So, for example, most Britons now accept that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland deserve home rule - but what about England? Should Westminster serve as a federal legislature, dealing only with UK-wide problems - or should it double as a de facto English parliament? Why does one of the island nations, Scotland, have more autonomy than the others? Who should sit and vote in the Westminster   parliament; in the terms of the famed West Lothian question, why should Scottish MPs vote on exclusively English matters when English MPs have no say on exclusively Scottish ones?  What Labour has done is to open a can of worms: the worms were always there, we just couldn't see them before. Now the can is open we cannot look away. Perhaps the best illustration is the House of Lords. Some around Tony Blair might once have thought that expelling all but 92 of the hereditary peers would solve the problems of Britain's second chamber. Instead it's done the opposite, suddenly drawing attention to the absurd democratic deficit in parliament. When the hereditaries were there, the whole body could be written off as some Ruritanian joke. But Blair's reforms have prompted Britons to take a closer look. They now see a supposedly reformed second chamber barely more democratic than the blue-blood body it replaced - in which not a single member is elected. Leaving well alone, as the Tories used to advocate, was one thing. Now, say many Britons, if you're going to tinker with the upper house, you might as well make it democratic.    <B> Shattered mystique</B><BR>  And that's a view which is beginning to apply to our entire constitution: now that Labour has broken the taboo by daring to change it, logic demands that it be changed properly - and democratically. For the current, spatchcocked arrangement of old custom and New Labour modernisation risks being the worst of both worlds, creating a constitution that makes no sense and lacks the old (if spurious) defence of ancient continuity. The mystique has shattered at last; now our very system of government is up for grabs. Even the Conservatives are discussing radical, constitutional change: witness William Hague's flirtation with the notion of an English parliament.  There is one last factor which makes urgent our need for a new constitutional settlement. Britain may be an island, but we are not alone. The changes inside the United Kingdom have coincided with profound shifts outside it, too.  We are days away from a summit in Nice which will debate and decide the future shape of the European Union. Who should govern? A simple majority of member nations or each state by wielding its individual veto? How should the peoples of Europe be bound together? With a common currency and a shared military force - or as a loose, free trade area? How should Europe declare its values? With communiques and treaties or with a basic law? In other words, the European Union is in the midst of constitutional upheaval, too.  Beyond even Europe's boundaries, there is a similarly profound argument. The global anti-capitalist movement unleashed in Seattle and Prague asks who should rule the world - its people or the corporations and the World Trade Organisation? On the streets with the protesters or in the summit rooms of Nice, the debate turns on a single word: sovereignty. Put simply, who should be in charge? That's an issue for the world, as it grapples with the domination of Microsoft or Big Oil and gropes for a new regime of global governance. It's an issue for Europe, as it works out whether sovereignty can be pooled or only diluted. And it's an issue for Britain: who is sovereign in our land?  What it all adds up to - the weaknesses of Britain's old system, the changes made by Labour and the worldwide confusion over sovereignty - is a need: we are crying out for a new constitutional settlement. We urgently require a new dispensation that would work better than the current set-up, improve the quality of our governance and yield better outcomes and better policies that would affect all Britons' lives. A new dispensation would also complete some unfinished business left over from Labour's programme of constitutional reform, turning today's "unsettlement" into a settlement. For those who care about the survival of Britain that has become an urgent task: for if we do not decide a future for the union of our nations, then that union will simply unravel. Britain will break apart.  Our country needs this new settlement within our borders to work out our place in the world beyond them. Many reformers have argued that so long as we remain confused over our own sovereignty, we have little chance of sharing or pooling it with others. When the relationship between Scotland and England is still vexed, is it any wonder we cannot find the right connection between Britain and France?  We need to make a change. We need to replace an unwritten constitution which consists of one abstract idea - the crown-in-parliament - with a settlement that fits the nation we have become and the world that now exists. We cannot wear the old, moth-eaten garb of the past any longer: we have outgrown it. This is a new century and a new millennium: we need a new constitution. <B>Related stories - news</B><BR>  <BR>  <B>Related stories - comment</B><BR><BR>  <BR>  <BR>  <BR>  <B>Related stories - background</B><BR>
