THE CENTRAL RULE OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION is the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. The Crown-in-Parliament has total legislative freedom, except that it cannot bind its successors. More prosaically, parliamentary sovereignty means that the government can legislate on whatever it would like, so long as a majority of MPs consent.
Nothing is off the table. Parliament can legislate to confiscate the wealth of the richest people in the country, or it can ban trade unions. Parliament can nationalise the health service, or it can close all the mines. Parliament can impose a 100 per cent income tax on the wealthy, or it can abolish the minimum wage. In the British constitution, where there is political will, there is always a way.
Once despotic, the power of the Crown-in-Parliament is today unusually democratic. It affords British MPs a range of political options that in most other systems of government would not be within their constitutional remit — or, at least, such decisions would be subject to ultimate approval by a or governors, or a veto-wielding president. Whatever comes out of Parliament is constitutional. The British Parliament, therefore, is at once a legislature and a continuing constitutional assembly.
