5th December 2022
The former prime minister Gordon Brown, on behalf of the opposition Labour party, has put forward proposals for de-centralising the state of the United Kingdom.
This is rather ironic in that Brown, as chancellor of the exchequer, was one of the most centralising ministers of modern times.
Under Brown the Treasury dominated Whitehall and the civil service generally, and it also sought to enforce discipline on the public sector generally.
(I know this, as I was a civil service lawyer at Brown’s Office of Government Commerce, which was one of the ways the Treasury sought to control and shape central and local government.)
Perhaps Brown has since had a conversion.
He was, after all, the politician who once gave away the powers of the Treasury in respect of interest rates to an independent Bank of England.
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But the problem of centralisation is bigger than Brown or any one politician.
Centralisation is the gravitational pull of the constitution of the United Kingdom.
The force can be bucked from time-to-time, but it will always be there.
In legal terms, the gravitational pull comes from the doctrines of the supremacy of parliament and the royal prerogative.
All public bodies, other than parliament and the crown, are subject to the ultimate control of law made by the crown-in-parliament.
Even the Scottish Parliament, as the Supreme Court recently decided, is effectively no more than a statutory corporation subject to a strict rule of ultra vires.
Local government bodies are in similar but worse positions.
In policy and political terms, a further gravitational pull comes from the Treasury.
The Treasury dominates public spending and public revenues.
No other public body is likely to be given absolute autonomy over spending and revenues.
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Politicians may go through the motions of de-centralisation, with a token development here and some well-meaning gesture there.
But the fundamental forces generated by the Westminster parliament and HM Treasury will not go away.
It would only be by devolution and regional settlements so radical that the powers of Westminster and Whitehall were vanquished forever that de-centralisation would be sustainable.
Self-denial would not enough – what would be needed would be constitutional self-destruction.
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This self-destruction is never going to happen – at least not easily.
Scotland and Wales are not going to be granted dominion status, like Australia or Canada, with their Parliament and Senedd being co-equal with Westminster’s assembly.
The regions are not going to be permitted to become like American states or German Länder, with powers that no central government can gainsay.
But without such radical constitutional surgery, the relentless force of centralisation will be there.
No United Kingdom government is going to freely give away its legislative power in parliament or its policy dominance with the Treasury.
And so we will just have tokens and gestures of de-centralisation again, only to fail; and then – in a few more years – these motions of de-centralisation will be repeated, and they will fail again.
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A really excellent piece for which my thanks. We shouldn’t forget – you don’t – the historical one-way ratchet that’s been operating since Anglo-Saxon times (we were the first European country to have a single currency in King Edgar’s day), with further twists given by the Tudors. The power of the Exchequer is and always has been the single greatest insuperable obstacle to any real constitutional change in this country. Devolution to date is window-dressing.
Sir Keir Starmer KC has a funny idea of devolution and consultation.
He sets up an exclusive national body under Gordon Brown to come up with a list of recommendations and then decides which ones to lay before the public.
The sort of thing to which some folk do object at local level!
And a multi-layered patchwork quilt of local administrative bodies, variable revenue raising powers, statutory responsibilities and voluntary responsibilities etc will not make the landscape of the UK economy easier to navigate or invest in, especially in the context of Hard Brexit.
Good point. The reason for Labour’s sudden enthusiasm for constitutional reform is the Labour/Conservative imbalance in the HoL which cannot be redressed after 12 years of Tory governments putting their donors on the red benches except by flooding the upper chamber, which is a no-no. Hence more structural reform is advocated as a solution.
Shouldn’t we do the job properly and have a Royal Commission, or is that too old hat?
Except in the last few years, the Conservatives lost their overall majority in the House of Lords.
Maybe Sir Keir Starmer KC fears his Ministerial team in the House of Lords would not be able to persuade their fellow peers to pass his Government’s legislation.
A cynic might observe that Sir Keir’s House of Lords reform is a little bit of red meat for his middle class, liberal followers disappointed by his setting his face against electoral reform; softening Hard Brexit in a significantly practical way; working with other parties apart from the DUP and the Tories; his support for the basics of Suella Braverman’s immigration policy, except the Rwanda element of it …
Yes, a Royal Commission would surely be giving constitutional reform the level of attention and importance that it deserves.
“Aye, lass, I usually vote Tory, but I’m gonna give Labour a go.”
“Why, our Seth?”
“Well Sir Keir Starmer KC has pledged to move some of the oversight management of our local Jobcentre from Sheffield to t’town hall and that’s summat I’ve been hankering after for years.”
59% of the Leave vote in 2016 was ABC1 and in England, the Leave vote was concentrated in the South.
If we are to believe Sir Keir Starmer KC, many of those who run and, more importantly, own this country voted for Brexit because they lacked “control over their lives”.
The one exception to increasing centralism being Northern Ireland which post 1920 (Gov of Ireland Act) and updated 1998 (Gov of NI Act) and then again in 2020 (NI Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Act) is self governing and with a unique protected hybrid status both in UK law, EU law and international law.
Hence the determined attempt of the (current) British Nationalist faction of the Tories (the ERG + hangers on) and of militant Ulster Unionists (latest iteration being the DUP) to repudiate both the NIP and GFA. They will fail.
This is clearly a cynical ploy intended simultaneously to blunt the keen blade of Scottish and Welsh separatist aspiration and to bring back into the fold those former Labour supporters in the north of England whose sense of disenfranchisement made the chimera of Brexit momentarily attractive.
It will do nothing other than to confirm, for Labour’s opponents, their suspicion that they are regarded as essily bought. It won’t work.
this is exactly as it’s being read in Indy-oriented Scotland.
Lisa Nandy wants to devolve power out from the centre.
Lisa Nandy wants to rebuild England along the lines of Wigan.
Lisa Nandy thinks Aberdeen, where even Michael Gove’s remit does not run, is up for socio-economic regeneration.
Lisa Nandy is a mass of contradictions.
And, as Lisa Nandy showed very publicly on 29th December 2021 in that period between Christmas and the New Year when time lies heavily on some hands, there is some devolution she likes and some she really does not.
This current Labour leadership has clearly yet to learn the value of working cross party and cross community to create effective, sustainable, inclusive change whether in the field of socio-economic regeneration or our Unwritten Constitution.
https://jodatu.wordpress.com/2022/02/20/lisa-nandy-and-the-strange-case-of-the-dukes-potholed-drive/
“The purpose of power is to be able to give it away.”
Aneurin Bevan also famously said that the sound of a dropped bedpan in Tredegar would reverberate around the Palace of Westminster.
What do voters really want?
Good public services, responsive to their needs?
Do they want a choice, Sir Tony?
No.
Do they want their oversight devolved from faceless civil servants to faceless local government officers, Sir Keir?
I suspect most really could not care less even if they were able to distinguish between national and local government employees.
“Ordinary people do not want a say in how hospitals are run, any more than they want a say in how their supermarket is run. Their aspiration is that the hospital, like the supermarket, delivers the goods and services they want.”
https://www.johnkay.com/2003/05/08/bedpans-should-be-heard-no-more-in-whitehall/
But we individual voters / consumers of public services probably do want the rights to enforce transparency on those running institutions important to us and to get specific answers to specific questions when we want them.
Thinking back on the things I care about, the rights to be informed and to have the opportunity of changing individual proposals we dislike do matter a great deal. There will probably be relatively few issues at parish council, district and county council or government levels we’d actually want to challenge … but having the right and capacity to do so at will matters hugely to most of the people I know.
Sir Keir Starmer KC is, for example, talking about a proportion of the management of your local Jobcentre being transferred from an anonymous office in Sheffield (where once dwelt the Manpower Services Commission) to your local town hall or your mayor, if you have one who is not ceremonial.
Your rights to complain about the service at the Jobcentre will not be affected.
To whom you might complain about the service would not be as straightforward as today.
I am not joking, because although Labour has talked about Balkanising the Jobcentre network (within just England?), Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has aspirations to fundamentally reform the whole network so it may deliver a voluntary or compulsory back to work programme to move 100s of 1,000s of the long term sick from being economically inactive to being economically active.
What would happen, if your local town hall said it wanted to have nothing to do with Ashworth’s reforms and/or programme is one of those matters of detail to which Labour has yet to turn its attention.
“Many of the recommendations (of the Gordon Brown commission) are based more around aspirations than specific policies, with the report calling for “necessary consultation and preparatory work” to begin on how and when they could be implemented.”
The constant references to “Sir Keir Starmer KC” are becoming irksome, so be careful.
Good piece. I wish Labour would be honest and realistic about which issues are priorities and how to improve the state of Britain. They are still tilting at windmills and trying to sidestep things the right wing press will criticise. E.G. The FPTP duopoly is past its expiry date. It underlies much of the political dysfunction including Labour dishonesty.
The United Kingdom comprises at least four nations (sorry, I am overlooking the independence claims of Cornwall, or Yorkshire, or London, or others) that are by and large ruled from Westminster. The overwhelming power of England always has been the elephant in the room for the British constitutional settlement. That can work when Westminster (and more generally England) is cognisant of and sensitive towards the hopes and desires of the other three nations, and uses its power lightly. But it seems to me the union is gravely imperiled when the English at Westminster behave like an imperial power, riding roughshod over the wishes of the natives in the periphery and strongarming them into positions that suit most people in England but not most people in Wales, Northern Ireland, or Scotland.
Yes, devolve more power where it makes sense – subsidiarity is a good principle. And replace the House of Lords for a more legitimate and democratic alternative – if that is what you really want, and really think the new dispensation will work better in practice.
But the one constitutional change that would make a real substantial and lasting difference to the complexion of the government is proportional representation. And it seems that is not on offer.
The most radical ‘change’ to the constitution was delivered by the Brexit referendum.
No plan just a binary question.
Is there a reason to believe that it won’t be tried again with a simple ‘take back control’ slogan?
Elect a second house and you, the voter, will have a direct line to your representatives.
“Elect a second house and you, the voter, will have a direct line to your representatives.”
We already do that with the Commons. If the principle works, we don’t need it again for the Lords: if it doesn’t, why would doing the same thing again have a different result?
I have a similar objection to any proposal for reforming the Lords: if it’s supposed to have some major benefit to justify the upheaval and expense, why don’t we need exactly the same reform for the Commons? And if we then had two elected houses (like the USA), what use is that beyond having one?
I accept that there is a direct line to an MP but the MP is usually a party representative as well. Private members bills occasionally make it through but the days when really significant changes follow that route are long gone, aren’t they?
If the regions were represented in some form as I think is being suggested and if the existing expertise in the Lords continued, the public’s voice might be better represented?
I am highly sceptical that any reform will be such that it reduces the power of political parties. I think it would be more likely to increase it.
“No United Kingdom government is going to freely give away its legislative power in parliament or its policy dominance with the Treasury.”
I’m sure you’re right there, David, but it doesn’t follow that ‘we will just have tokens and gestures of de-centralisation again’; I can think of a couple of constitutionally-legitimate ways that radical constitutional surgery might happen without the government initiating it.
That would, however, need certain people to stretch the boundaries of the constitution – and, so far, I’ve not seen any sign that they might find the will, or confidence, to do so. The only alternative I can see, though, is for the current societal breakdown to gather pace until there is room for a new system to emerge; and that’s going to be a far more traumatic process than radical surgery initiated by those in a position to do so.
John McDonnell as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer came up with the radical, original idea of a Department for Economic Affairs, the inspiration for Yes Minister’s Department for Administrative Affairs (and no, the brains behind Yes Minster were not time travellers), to balance out His Majesty’s Treasury.
Sir Keir Starmer KC on 25th July 2022 announced “we will establish an Industrial Strategy Council.
And we will go further by putting it on a statutory footing.
A permanent part of the landscape.
That sets out our strategic national priorities that go beyond the political cycle.
Brings in the expertise of business, science, and unions
Holds us to account for our decisions.
And builds confidence for investors that will boost long-term growth and productivity.”
Older viewers will recall NEDDY.
I am assuming Sir Keir has yet to register that for his Industrial Strategy Council to have “strategic national priorities that go beyond the political cycle” it needs must have, well, the representatives of other political parties sitting on it.
Sir Keir comes out in hives at the prospect of working with other progressive parties as he fears it may send the wrong message to key target voters in Red Wall seats and upset the Scottish Labour Party.
I am so old I remember the Wilson version of the DEA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_State_for_Economic_Affairs
This is a very clear explanation of the limits of devolution. It worked when policy priorities of the UK and devolved governments were similar, but comes under mounting strain when faced by increasing political self-assertiveness in Scotland, and to a lesser degree in Wales. Solutions sufficiently radical to address these pressures would be incompatible with the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.
“the doctrines of the supremacy of parliament and the royal prerogative”
What is it I hear in the wind? … Britain needs a written constitution?
PS: real decentralisation requires a degree of fiscal autonomy, the freedom to raise revenue independently of central government.
Does Scotland collect its own taxes or are monies ‘returned’ by Whitehall? Genuine question.
Spot on. All roads lead to Whitehall.
“No other public body is likely to be given absolute autonomy over spending and revenues.”
Decentralisation In Name Only, presumably via delegated authorities (within defined constraints, and which would, ahem, have to be set, reviewed and approved centrally within tolerance).
That might still be preferable, but personally very hard to see a central parliament being happy with that level of political and economic risk (see Thurrock as an example).
Also not sure electorate screaming for more local governors, or just more money. Cynically local administrations also might appreciate someone else to blame…
The other big centralising force is the desire for a coherent foreign and defence policy. Westminster’s not in a hurry to give up the only place in the UK it can park it’s nominally-independent nuclear deterrent, nor the air bases, nor the reach of airspace: the English-Scottish border being barely half-way up the distance from the south coast of England to the northernmost bit of Shetland. And that’s before we even consider the water and the potential for renewable energy.
“Alan felt that we were doing quite enough already. Many of our troops from the north were unemployed, that’s why they joined up. This argument won’t wash with the PM, who is concerned about jobs in the north, whereas the troops who have joined up in the north are spending all their money in the south where they now are.
Alan said that this was logically inevitable, since there is nothing to spend it on in the north.
Field Marshal Sir Geoffrey Howard joined us. He went straight on to the attack, informing me that this proposal must be stopped. He told me that you can’t just move hundreds of thousands of men around the country like that.
I thought that’s what you did with armies. It sounds a feeble argument to me. But upon closer examination it was the permanence of the move to which he objected.
Quite reasonably. He conceded that some servicemen could be stationed permanently in the north of England: other ranks perhaps, junior officers possibly. But he made it clear, very properly, that we really cannot ask senior officers to live permanently in the north.
I asked for a list of reasons. He obliged.
Their wives wouldn’t stand for it.
No schools. [There were schools in the north of England at this time, but perhaps Sir Geoffrey meant that suitable fee-paying schools were not accessible – Ed.]
Harrods is not in the north.
Nor is Wimbledon.
Ditto Ascot.
And the Henley Regatta.
Not to mention the Army and Navy Club.
In short, he argued that civilisation generally would be completely remote. This sort of sacrifice is acceptable to the forces in time of war but if the move were made in these circumstances, morale would undoubtedly plummet.
I was impatient with these arguments. The matter is to be discussed in Cabinet this afternoon, and more serious arguments are required than senior officers being three hundred miles from the club, however disturbing, however true!”
One may fully submerge in Holy Loch and set sail for the North Atlantic, almost unobserved by prying eyes.
And that I gather, more than anything else is why the UK’s Trident submarines are stationed there.
There is no dual key lock on the use of the UK’s nuclear deterrent with one key held by an officer of the United States Navy.
However, without the cooperation of the US, said a report of an independent all-party Trident Commission in July 2014, the life expectancy of the UK’s nuclear capability could be measured in months.
The commission’s high level panel said it agreed with the view that Britain’s deterrent is “a hostage to American goodwill”.
Britain’s Trident missiles are in a common pool shared with the US and maintained in Kings Bay, Georgia, its nuclear warheads are designed and maintained at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston with the help of US know-how, according to declassified documents on the UK-US Mutual Defence Agreement.
Maybe the UK should seek greater independence on the provision and maintenance of its nuclear weapons from the occupant of the White House and the folks on the Hill.
Not that they are in any way, unelected bureaucrats.
Britain raises and determines the spending of much less of the public purse at a local or regional level than our peers. In my youth, we used to point to the over-centralisation of France, but they have devolved and we have centralised.
One of the largest centralising forces of recent decades was the abolition of the rates. It ultimately resulted in a large reduction in the amount of tax raised on property, and hence locally. That was because the ultimate replacement tax, the community charge, greatly compressed the range of the tax, and it needed to be affordable at the lower end. This transfer in the prominence of national tax-raising, as opposed to local, greatly increased the dominance of Westminster over local authorities. Once Westminster was handing out the money to local authorities, it had greater power to tell them what to spend it on.
And this is a bad thing for inequality also. Property is undertaxed in this country, in comparison to our sensible peers. It would be a nice step back in the right direction to reform property taxes. But this is not the kind of thing any politician who wishes to be elected would like to talk about in advance of an election.
People would rather have good public services, than a choice. But local decision-making has a better chance of delivering good public services – of appropriate types – than some remote central authority.
But the political feasibility of reforming taxation and spending authority is always very tricky. Usually it takes some kind of disaster to rearrange things like this.
The Uniform Business Rate, as opposed to the Council Tax, is collected by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and then distributed from the centre, using a methodology that allocates the money by, to some extent, need.
Thus some councils receive a smaller share of the UBR pot than the amount of UBR raised within their boundaries and others receive a larger amount than that gathered within their administrative area.
Labour’s plan to remove the charitable status of private schools would actually increase the amount of UBR collected every year by a sizeable amount, certainly more than the amount of Value Added Tax that is being bandied about.
Any legislation for levying VAT on school fees may require some nifty drafting to avoid catching other bodies which charge for educational services, but which are not major or minor public schools.
Labour plans to siphon off the new UBR revenue stream, ringfence it and then distribute it across the country for spending on education, only.
It will come as no surprise that the local authorities which feel short changed by the current UBR set up would like to have the UBR gathered within their districts given straight to them.
It would also be nice to have the option to vary the rate individual businesses pay, and not necessarily to reduce it either, or even exempt some organisations from paying at all with the aim of boosting the local economy.
The more revenue local authorities raise themselves, the less control central government has over them.
It would appear that Labour has mentioned giving local authorities some facility to raise revenue themselves, but if the same tax raising powers are not given equally to all authorities and/or are conditional in some way then the current situation will begin to look simpler and possibly even fairer in comparison.
The recommendations of Gordon Brown’s commission do look ever more like nothing more than a series of bullet points from a brainstorm.
As the UK government is the only body able legitimately to create money, devolution is always going to be subjugated by the power of money.
What proper local devolution actually needs is greater – well just some – currency creation powers.
They need to be able to spend money into existence just like central government does.
This radical change would have to proceed slowly at first and could be limited to a certain amount per head, but in time it would allow ‘devolved’ local authorities to take on greater responsibilities and respond to the needs of their electorate which they are necessarily much closer to than Westminster.
Too much danger of inflation they will cry – that’s why you need to start small. But inflation would become partially a local phenomenon and if it is found that inflation is excessive in Little Pudlington on the Myre then its cause should be all the easier to ascertain.
When money is power devolution needs to apply to money too…
US, German, Canadian, Swiss etc. Federal systems exist perfectly well without allowing local States/Provinces/Cantons to shake the Magic Money Tree. They can borrow from the banks or the markets.
I’m in favour of a much more federal system of government. There are some things that need legislating for on a nation level (to maintain standards across the board for one thing.)
Aside from that though, it just seems to make more sense (imo) than trying to organise everything from the top down and offers tangible power to local regions. (This maybe the rub, of course. Would central governments want local regions having revenue raising capabilities etc?)
Perhaps we should not expect too much to finally come of Gordon Brown’s work given what has happened to the skills advisory panel headed up by Lord Blunkett.
On the day of last year’s CBI Conference at which Keir Starmer was to address the delegates in person, briefing was given to the media detailing a key announcement that he would make during his speech.
Nothing unusual about that.
The Guardian was given a particularly detailed briefing and quotes by Team Starmer.
So far, so normal.
The announcement was of a skills advisory panel; its mission and its members.
The purpose of the panel was to look into what employers wanted in school leavers.
A speech at the CBI Conference was, therefore, the ideal opportunity to announce the panel.
However, it was clear from the briefing quoted at length in the Guardian that Lord Blunkett and his team would not be consulting employers as to what they wanted in new recruits straight out of school.
In fact, they would “tour the country with the shadow education secretary, Kate Green, talking to teachers, children and educational experts.”
As an aside, it is not usual to refer to secondary school pupils as children, but students. Now that might sound rather picky, but not I would argue in this specific context.
Starmer’s speech was rather overshadowed by Boris Johnson’s invocation of Peppa the Pig.
I have patiently explained more than once on Twitter to Starmer supporters that I do not imagine CBI members were impressed with being told that they were not competent to say what skills they sought in new staff.
And I imagine that other key stakeholders like the trades unions and local government were surprised at not being involved in the panel’s work.
I have to say that it was around this time I gave up all hope of Starmer’s style of leadership becoming adequate to the tasks ahead of it.
I have asked some Starmer supporters how they might react, if I said to them, I am going to make you a cup of tea just how you like it then I go and make it without asking you how you like it.
Some of them said they did not get the point.
A journalist on Twitter a few weeks ago said that Blunkett had reported, quoting some items from his findings that would I suspect meet with the approval of “teachers, children and educational experts”, but not necessarily of employers.
As you will recall, Starmer addressed the CBI Conference this year with his forthright views on the value of migrant workers to the society and economy of the UK, but did not find time to report back on Blunkett’s work (or if he did, I missed it).
As I know a fair amount about education, training and employment, I went into some detail about this panel on my own blog.
https://jodatu.wordpress.com/2021/11/22/team-starmer-couldnt-sell-air-conditioning-to-arabs-in-the-sahara-desert-but-they-might-interest-them-in-natural-and-mild-in-vitro-fertilisation/
There is a certain delicious irony in that one of Keir Starmer’s many job creation pledges is to put careers advisers in every secondary school.
You may currently apply to the Home Office for a visa to come to the UK to work as a careers adviser.
And we are desperate for vocational trainers, teachers, childcare workers, Crown Prosecutors, District Judges … from overseas.
So they can.
Who exactly gets that borrowing interest?
For sure as hell it does not land in the account of the devolved authority – but rather in the hands of the bankers’ bonus.
I’d rather shake the Magic Money Tree, thank you.
Brazil in the last century.
The Central Bank had a constitutional obligation to finance any deficit of the individual States. Unsurprisingly, these rarely bothered to balance their books and overall government deficits were horrendous.
Control of the Money Supply was effectively impossible and inflation was 80% pa on a good year.
Not recommended.
@Charles Bruggmann
Fascinating – thank you.
It doesn’t reflect well on democracy and speaks to our capture by the banking lobby when it is deemed preferable for the bankers to shake their Magic Money Tree in order to create a interest bearing loan for local government, rather than give that democratically elected local government the right to shake their own Magic Money Tree without interest.
Hence I didn’t suggest financing any deficit – just allowing more local original spending. Inflation control is inherent in all government spending as that government has the ability to tax it out of existence.
I suspect that was missing in Brazil.
Peter May said “Inflation control is inherent in all government spending as that government has the ability to tax it out of existence.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t true in practice: if Peter is hoarding most of the money that’s been issued, taxing Paul simply puts him in a position of subservience to Peter (which is why I have argued for some years that it is illegitimate for a government to impose an obligation to pay taxes in any form that people have no natural capacity to supply). But taxing Peter heavily enough to control inflation carries a different kind of cost which makes that impractical too.
In practice, I don’t think it’s possible for any society to ensure a stable money supply without separating the medium-of-exchange and store-of-wealth functions of money. But if that were done, I think it should be relatively simple to develop a system in which both local and central government are able to create money.
Having now skim read the report, they do have an ingenious idea for entrenching devolution in the face of Parliament‘a power.
The second chamber is to have representatives from the devolved authorities in it along with a blocking power. This would mean devolution could not be overruled without the permission of the devolved.
I’ve not noticed anyone reporting this. It would effectively make the UK much more of a federal government.
The idea of representatives from the devolved authorities with a blocking power was a really significant, even novel, development. Sadly, it would most likely be viewed through the prism of constitutional self-destruction.