As the lights start to go out for English democracy ....

From a comment I just added to John Rewood's post on a bad day at the office:

The repercussions of all this will be wide and far reaching. Much as the King once oppressed the people (or at least the nobles) leading to the Magna Carta, so the people are now oppressed by a government which is unconstrained by the need to speak the truth or keep its word.

I have mixed views on the ID card issue - I'm afraid I see it as coming about inevitably with time. It will no doubt be very costly and badly handled, but still hard to stop.

Our real problem is at the same time the government has become self serving, deceitful and full of contempt for the wider population. Thanks to its fascination with marketing and spin combined with its shameless willingness to distort the truth, hide facts, issue false dossiers and break oaths to the people we stand on the edge of giving this monster unprecedented power over us all.

Government can no longer be trusted. It is no longer constrained by decency, religion, or shame. It is about to be handed unprecedented power over us all through information technology.

Hence government must be changed. A new Magna Carta is needed to constrain government and restore the nations sovereignty over itself from this self selecting bunch of student politicians.

The alternative is to fall into the night with no hope of awakening.

Our constitution that relied on decent behaviour and honourable members of parliament has now become the means by which liars, traitors and thieves can defraud and rob the nation. Whilst it is unfortunate that the left have done much of the thinking on constitutional change - it is now time for the right of centre to give this much more thought.

A good starting point would be the constitution of the United States...