A Fascinating Conversation on X
This is where we need to be—having conversations in mainstream spaces
Last night and this morning, a couple of us engaged in conversation a gentleman (I will call ‘J’) about Constitutional matters and the state of things currently.
I have outlined a particularly interesting part of the conversation that ends with an ‘emperor is wearing no clothes moment’.
I haven’t included the whole conversation—and, of course, as with all chat on X, there are complex branches of the conversation which is difficult to reproduce. So I’ve taken one part of it and put a little bit of commentary here to explain where things were going.
The conversation got to a point where Lou (who was also on this with me) had argued that legitimacy must come from a position of Natural Justice and equity. J agreed but began…
Lou, you’re arguing from natural law – the idea that some rights exist above government and cannot be taken away. That is a moral and philosophical position. Many people agree with it. But it is not how the UK legal system actually works in practice.
In British law there is no higher legal authority that can strike down an Act of Parliament. Courts cannot say “this statute is invalid because it breaks the constitution”. If Parliament passes a law, it becomes law. That is what parliamentary sovereignty means. It has been confirmed repeatedly by the courts themselves for centuries.
Magna Carta does not override Parliament. Most of it has already been repealed by Parliament over time. Jury trial is governed by modern statutes and has been limited, expanded and reshaped many times by legislation. That isn’t theory – it has already happened in real life.
So the uncomfortable truth is this: you may believe Parliament should not be able to do this, but legally it can. That is exactly why the political debate matters. In the UK the safeguard is public pressure and elections, not a court declaring laws void afterwards.
You’re arguing about what the constitution ought to be. The discussion here is about what it actually is.
Lou’s response begins quoting J:
“In fact, legal scholars openly note that rights in the UK constitution “must always yield to the supremacy of parliament.” this equates to a tyranny... one that’s not so easy to see - but a tyranny nonetheless
Yours truly then chips in…
Lou is right on this. The Constitution in 1215 (and prior) was that the King and gov were all under the Common Law and the Jury. King J was effectively under his own trial. I know when that changed, but it was unlawful to do it. Nobody would have had the right to make that change
J comes back to me…
In medieval England the King really was constrained by custom, force and political consent. Magna Carta was a peace treaty forced on a monarch who risked rebellion if he ignored it. That was power in practice, not constitutional law in the modern sense.
But the system did not freeze in 1215. Over centuries Parliament gradually replaced the Crown as the sovereign authority. By the time of the Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights, the balance of power had shifted completely. The courts later confirmed the modern position very clearly: Parliament is the supreme law-making body. That is not a recent invention; it has been the settled doctrine for centuries.
You can argue that this change should never have happened. That is a political and philosophical argument. But legally, it did happen, and the courts recognise it. That is why changes like this are fought in Parliament and in public opinion, not struck down by judges afterwards.
So that response propelled me into this 18-tweet response one after the other! Yes, I couldn’t hold myself back and you might find some of this useful…
[J], I don’t think you’ve looked at this deeply ennough (with respect). And I can’t respond fully enough in this format so I’ll do my best. MC1215 was not forced onto a King illegitimately. The King had committed crimes, broken the Common Law and breached his oath...
…The Oath that was taken back then was similar in substance and was customary law (Common Law) from the late Saxon times. In particular, King J had attempted in 1213 to give the nation away as a fief to the authority of Rome. The limits of his Kinship prevented precluded that…
...so, the actions of the Archbishop Stephen Langton, the Barons, Bishops, nobles etc, were to hold court effectively. Which is how a wayward King was brought to account. It was equity at play. All equal under the law. This was not merely a romantic story…
...So the MC1215 was an expression not of something new, but the principles of governance that had already existed. An equitable governing framework that kept the ownership of justice, constitution etc in the hands of the people themselves…
...Yes things went wrong incrementally over time. The worst thing was the idea creeping in (collectivist mindset) that the public servants have a right to re-write/alter the very framework that binds it. Absolutely unlawful. So the notion that...
...Constitutional Law can be written by the government through its own legislative mechanisms is absurd and ridiculous nonsense. The authority of the Constitution never emanates from Statute. Yes, principles can be expressed or re-enforced but there are dangers with that…
...A government that re-expresses constitutional principles, but then hides false ideas in there with it precisely how these false beliefs come about over time. Now, re. the ‘Glorious’ Revolution and the Bill of Rights...
...This was a period of history of propaganda and disinformation like no other. The events that led up to it were filled with betrayal, back-stabbing, agitation, misdirection against James II, who, if he had been able to continue, may have been one of our best Kings…
...the official version of our history from that time is easily debunked. The Glorious Revolution was essentially a Dutch coup d’état mounted through collusion with a disaffected and disgruntled ‘Immortal 7’ mixed with a false Whig narative. Read the history carefully…
...I would recommend reading Jonathan Ireland, Eveline Cruickshanks, John Childs, WA Speck etc. The resulting Bill of Rights sprang from an illegitimate Parliamentary ‘Convention’ in which they claimed James had abdicated when he expressly hadn’t...
...they ignored James’ real next in line (which was the law at the time) James Edward Francis and gave the Dutch (and William) administrative power before any arrangement had been made. They basically chased him out of the country...
...They then proceeded to write the Coronation Oath text into statute - itself unlawful for the reasons I gave earlier. The gov should not be writing the Common Law Constitutional framework. They inserted a clause that hinted that now the King would govern according to statutes..
...that might now not be constitutional (previously statutes are not mentioned in the oath because it was understood that all statute should be in alignment with the Common Law and the Constitution.). The Bill of Rights denuded the King...
...such that he was no longer able to do his duty. Why get a King to promise to govern if you then remove his powers to do it??! Gaslighting. Absolute mess. The Bill of Rights also confirmed illegal limitations on Jury membership and weakened the people’s own protections...
...furthermore, the Bill originally made reference in the now removed section to the Magna Carta creating a circular argument that essentially rendered the Bill of Rights itself ineffectual and void. So they removed that ...
...proving the dangers of writing constitutional law into statute. (The act of removing the reference to Magna Carta is effectively the removal of the legitimacy of governance from that point). So now we have a Parliamentary purported ‘authority’...
...in which it’s now all about party politics and that we can create whatever laws we like as long as you can get enough people to go along with it. Great! So much for the great English Law tradition. Where dod that go [J]? Was it lawful ever to remove that? [No]....
...therefore the current condition of governance no longer rests on Natural Justice principles. Therefore it is fundamentally illegitimate and unprincipled! It may technically be legal - but that means nothing. The right to legislate that murder is OK but TBJ is not is a crime. :-)
[J], then wrote this as a reply to Lou [emphasis mine]:
Lou, we’re talking past each other because we’re using the word “legitimate” in two different ways.
You are arguing moral legitimacy – the idea that some laws would be so unjust they should never be obeyed. Most people would agree with that in principle. But the discussion here is about legal authority: what the UK system recognises as law in practice.
When I said juries sit as a safeguard, I was describing how the system currently works, not claiming juries sit above Parliament. If Parliament changes the law governing jury trials, the courts must apply that law. That has happened repeatedly throughout history as criminal procedure has been changed many times by statute.
Your hypothetical about extreme laws actually proves the distinction. If Parliament passed something truly outrageous, the courts would still treat it as law. The check would be political pressure, public resistance and ultimately elections. That is how the British system has always functioned.
So the real disagreement here isn’t about justice. It’s about the difference between what the constitution should guarantee and what the UK legal order actually recognises today.
So in this response he’s admitting that what we now no longer have is justice and morality. So I responded…
But this is the point, [J]. How about we stop gaslighting the people. In effect you have admitted that our constitutional state of affairs is morally illegitimate. So perhaps we should all stop pretending that everything’s fine because of the political ‘checks and balances’.
J then responds…
I am not gaslighting anyone and I’m not defending the system. I’m describing it.
Explaining how parliamentary sovereignty works is not endorsing it. It is acknowledging the legal framework that actually exists. You may think that framework is morally flawed. That is a political argument. But pretending the courts have powers they do not possess will not strengthen the case for reform.
You say we should stop pretending everything is fine. I’m not saying everything is fine. I’m saying that in the UK the check on Parliament is political, not judicial. That isn’t comfort. It’s reality.
If you believe the constitutional settlement is morally illegitimate, then the argument is for reform – perhaps for a written constitution or entrenched rights. But reform begins with an honest assessment of how the system currently operates, not with asserting that it already works differently from the way the courts themselves say it does.
I don’t like the concentration of power any more than you do. But accuracy is not gaslighting. It’s the starting point for any serious constitutional debate.
My response:
I understand that. But you haven’t acknowledged my point that the Constitutional framework was as I’ve described it: Under limitations of the Common Law. Now it purports not to be. What gave anyone the right to alter that - and then lie and pretend? You haven’t addressed that.
and…
If, in the original arrangement, the government was properly under Moral Law and the King limited, then in order to make the change to our current purported condition, someone would have had to break the King’s Oath. That’s a crime. Therefore one might even claim this is illegal.
This is where we need to be, ladies and gents. On platforms like X asking awkward questions that begin to bring the elephant in the room into focus!
WJK
Will, I hope you’ll take this in the spirit intended, because I think what you’re trying to defend is something important — the idea that law should be anchored in justice and not merely in procedural power.
Where I struggle is with the step where law is said to stem from morality in a direct and binding sense.
Law and morality overlap, but they are not identical. If they were identical, then every legal question would simply become a moral disagreement. Whose morality? Medieval Christian natural law? Enlightenment rationalism? Modern human rights doctrine? Popular majority opinion? These are not trivial differences.
Law requires determinate authority. Morality is contested.
Equity historically meant consistency, procedural fairness and application of known principles — not whatever feels morally correct in a given moment. If morality itself becomes the governing mechanism, equity risks dissolving into subjectivity.
I also think there is a distinction that J is making which is worth preserving: the difference between legal validity and moral legitimacy. A law can be legally valid under a system and yet morally objectionable. That does not mean we approve of it. It means we are clear about how authority is structured.
When you say the constitutional settlement changed unlawfully, the question becomes: unlawful according to which authority? If Parliament gradually became recognised by courts and institutions as sovereign, then the legal order shifted. One can argue that shift was morally wrong — but to say it was legally impossible assumes a fixed constitutional baseline that history doesn’t really show existed in a static form.
Magna Carta itself was amended, reissued, repealed in parts. It was a political settlement, not a frozen moral code. The English constitution evolved through power, custom, consent and conflict.
I don’t think acknowledging parliamentary sovereignty as a matter of current legal doctrine amounts to endorsing moral relativism. It simply recognises how the system presently operates. Reform, if desired, would have to operate within or consciously replace that framework.
Perhaps the deeper issue is this: law ultimately requires institutional authority, while morality does not. The two must speak to each other, but they cannot collapse into one another without destabilising the entire idea of legal order. If government were directly “by morality”, Law would become interpretive theology; Authority would shift to whoever claims moral insight; Stability would be placed in permanent contest.
Modern constitutional systems separate moral debate (politics, philosophy, public persuasion) from legal validity (institutional authority and procedure). That separation is not tyranny. It is what allows disagreement without collapse.