‘Harvesting the Cupboards’: Why Britain has Produced no Administrative Theory or Ideology in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

MY purpose today is to do a kind of David Bellamy on the least promising patch of that unmapped, unloved bog-of-a-phenomenon we call ‘The British Constitution’. You know the sort of thing—‘this might just look like a boring old bundle of procedures and conventions to you, but there's life and insight in here!’If ennui is already setting in, don't be upset. You are part of the grand tradition of our political nation. For my text today is from Mr Gladstone—his celebrated remark to the effect that:If there are two things on earth that John Bull hates, they are an abstract proposition and the Pope.