ABSTRACT

Brexit has exposed the differences between two radically different conceptions of the UK’s largely unwritten constitution. The first is the Westminster view, according to which Parliament is supreme and can do anything except bind itself. The devolution of power, whether to the European Union, the nations of the UK or to local government, represents nothing more than the lending of authority that can be taken back at any time. The other conception is that of the UK as a union of nations that have come together at various stages of their development but without surrendering their own identities and political traditions. In this view, there is no single UK people or demos, nor is there shared telos, or final destiny for the Union. It is, rather, negotiated and renegotiated over time and is interpreted differently in its component parts. Britishness, rather than being a single thing, is a family-resemblance concept whose meaning varies across the constituent nations. So English people might feel a single national identity, variously articulated as English or British, often without making a distinction between the two, while Scots can feel dual identities, as British and Scottish in various proportions. There is a legal/constitutional dimension to this, expressed in the idea that the Westminster view of sovereignty is alien to Scottish legal traditions and was not part of the Union compact of 1707 (MacCormick 1999).