Although many things remained the same, there were a lot of changes in the politics of Great Britain. We can differentiate constitutional changes and political ones.
Constitution has changed greatly since 1970s and is continuing to change until now. However these changes are implemented not by specially designed plan, claims David Lipsey. Moreover, changes in politics can be seen in a progression “from class politics to a politics based on individual and instrumentalist values”.
The first change was the Britain’s entry to the European Common Market. This entry was decided by ‘stay or quit’ referendum in 1975. Judicial power has also changed and so did judges. They were no longer separated from people, or as Lipsey calles “sect bound by iron doctrines”, but became an embodiment of justice which represented people’s rights, “practicing a broad faith”. Another big change was devolution to Scotland and Whales. There were several attempts for this, but only one was successful. The first attempt failed because of “some hostile MPs”, mentions Lipsey. The third change was the reform of the House of Lords. Among other changes we can distinguish decline in the Civil Service, the Freedom of Information Act of 2000, new electoral systems, deterioration of the power of local governments, introduction of referendums, reform of the House of Commons, the supremacy of EU law, decline in the role of ideology in many parties and reduction of the Lord Chancellor’s authorities.
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Thus, Great Britain faced many changes, political and constitutional in particular. The author was involved in national politics and explains that many transformations in the constitution were not coherent enough and lacked binding theme. Those changes included legislation of human rights, new electoral systems, implementation of referendums, judicial interventions and devolution. The main reason of such modifications lies in the dramatic change in social classes in Britain and its after-effects on politics.