This week sees the publication of Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton’s new book, The Conservative Effect 2010-2024: 14 Wasted Years?. The book reviews the record of the Conservative Party in government across various topics. Constitution Unit Director Meg Russell contributed the book’s chapter on ‘Government, Parliament and the Constitution’, and summarises it here. 

A sustained period of Conservative government would normally be expected to usher in constitutional stability. But the reverse applied to most of the period 2010-24. During this time constitutional controversies were rarely far from the news, partly due to deliberately planned changes, but more often to radically shifting conventions and political behaviour. The direction of change was also very far from consistent. The initial coalition period primarily saw pressures towards greater constitutional pluralism, though Liberal Democrat ambitions were often held back by Cameron’s Conservatives. Later, any prospect of calm under single-party government was quickly punctured by Brexit, which eventually brought into question almost every aspect of the UK’s constitutional arrangements. Boris Johnson’s populist approach, in particular, was characterised by wholesale disregard for constitutional norms.  

In 2012 Philip Norton emphasised that Conservative traditions valued constitutional conventions, parliament, and a strong government tempered by checks and balances, and might contemplate change that would ‘maintain, not destroy, the system’. This suggests that, if one commonality can be discerned across the 2010-24 period of constitutional extremes, it is its largely unconservative nature.