Burnham’s No. 10 North is a complete fiction: so from now on we should call it No. 9 ¾ North.
Fiction. A fake door, copied from the Downing Street one, bought for £1,000 and installed inside a building in central Manchester. “Pat McFadden insisted the £1,000 replica of the famous 10 Downing Street door was needed to show people they are ‘still part of the heart of decision-making in the UK’.” [Laughter.]
What? A Government press release said: “Burnham throws open the doors to No. 10 North today, marking a new era of power flowing out of Whitehall and into every postcode.” What? Including TS6 so the criminals can get a tighter hold over the people in the eastern districts of Middlesbrough?
Platform 9¾. Remember that? Invented by J.K. Rowling for the first Harry Potter book in 1997, it was established in King’s Cross Station in 2003, and is still there, apparently, though the station disappointed fans when in 2024 it decided to no longer officially announce the departure of the Hogwarts Express on September 1st at 11am, as it had done for a few years previously, citing disruption to ordinary passengers as the fans cluttered up the concourse.
No. 9¾ North is a portent of the coming politics: a magical politics, a moneytree politics, a mysterious politics, a clickbaiting politics. We should call it a Harry Potter Politics.
Hopefully No. 9¾ North will go the way of Platform 9¾ and just become a kitsch memory,
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9&3/4 North is the Fabian No2 sublet with No 10 Downing Street being the No1. These are properties belonging to The Fabian Society all controlled by Sir Tony Blair, the President. Andy Burnham has been installed as Prime Minister to apply the Northern approach in an attempt to fool the Nation and win the next General Election, whenever that may occur?
Excellent essay. The five points about constitutions are well made. Politics is about the pursuit of power, status and wealth and all constitutions are political in some way or another, as was Britain’s own ancien regime. If dissidence isn’t free to show itself in public then it simply disappears underground or behind the closed doors of institutions. Dissidence and the way it is handled by officialdom depend a good deal on the character of the population – their values and temperaments. The British have good reason to believe their system of government is superior to that of many other societies. Their greatest enemy is socialistic theorising based largely on alien philosophies and values.
Britain, this is the final nail in your coffin. The last puppet has been installed. Have you noticed nothing is making sense that comes out of the current regime? That is the way it is meant to be. To confuse, to gaslight, to ruin your country. Sad.
Brilliant essay. Once again. Especially on the nature of written vs unwritten constitutions and feudalism. A bit more straightforward (for dummies like me) than the essay, brilliant though it was, about the ‘Quinquagenary’. James, you light it all up for me. Thanks.
The problem with a written cobstitution is that it would be written by c@nts like Burnham, hermer and the rest.
If we had a credible Jefferson it would already be different.
Although I would still oppose it.
Can we not just go back to Magna Carta and the Bill Of Rights 1688?
Speaking as a Northumbrian from North of the Tees – Manchester is NOT the North – it’s Midlands.
Would Cheerful Chappy Andy Burnham like a ready made constitution off the shelf? How could he object to an Anglicised version of the United States constitution? Counties could become ‘states’ – plenty of devolution there. Clear tidying up of Government into into three distinct branches—legislative, executive, and judicial—to prevent tyranny and protect liberty.
The United States Constitution enshrines rights primarily through the Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments), which explicitly guarantees freedoms such as speech, press, religion, and the right to bear arms, alongside protections against unreasonable search and seizure and cruel punishment. I don’t see the Cheerful Chappie being quite so keen to adopt these protections.
Crucially they are not caveated unlike most other existing or proposed equivalents I have seen which guarantee freedoms except blah blah blah i.e. worthless.
The last thing we need is a Bill of Rights, people already have far too many rights e.g. the right not to be deported because their son doesn’t like foreign chicken nuggets.
A Bill of Responsibilities would be much better and could include:
Adopting British (Christian) values
Only speaking a British language in public (Welsh and Gaelic are fine)
Not claiming to be neurodiverse to avoid having to work
Ensuring your children are brought up properly and don’t become mindless thugs
We have that: Magna Carta and the 1689 Great (English) Bill of Rights & The Common Law of England. Then we have the Shires governed by Shire Reeves (or Sheriffs) the King’s appointed representative.
Well we used to have before the days of centralised government.
The problem is it doesn’t matter what is “enshrined” or written or the Law, or how many branches of government there are, if the shytes in power all connive and ignore it and hold all the levers of power, it makes no odds.
Example: despite the US Constitution and enshrined Rights, they were all taken away during the COVID scamdemic.
The seven kingdoms which became England?