Book Review: Christopher Edward Taucar, The British System of Government and its Historical Development
| Author | Benjamin B Saunders |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929916666774 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsBritain and Ireland |
Book Reviews 145
Here, we see him using the criterion of power
to trace a process of relentless geopolitical
decline. However, he sets alongside this analy-
sis welfare-related considerations that tell a
story of progress. For example, Skidelsky
notes that the British became ‘much more pros-
perous’ (p. 2), but against this, he sets the fact
that ‘[o]n most measures, the UK still fared
poorly compared to other rich countries’ (p.
397). Skidelsky’s exposition intersects with
that of Marquand when he describes post-war
Britain as standing in a position of ‘political
equipoise’ (ch. 9).
Skidlesky and Marquand identify Britain in
the decades after the Second World War as
wedded to the market while being committed to
the pursuit of social justice. However, the two
authors offer different accounts of the way in
which the commitment to equipoise weakened.
Skidelsky argues that this process began when
the state overreached itself: its commitment to
‘interventionism damaged the delicate balance
between capitalism and socialism, individual-
ism and collectivism’ (p. 284). Marquand iden-
tifies the Thatcher government as the cause of
the retreat from equipoise. While disagreeing
on the causes of the post-war settlement’s col-
lapse, Marquand and Skidlesky each reflect
mournfully on a social context in which indi-
vidualism has become a corrosive social force.
In dwelling on the retreat from political
equipoise, Marquand and Skidlesky have each
done useful work. For over a century, this sub-
ject has been a recurrent theme in the minds of
British politicians and commentators. For
example, when Winston Churchill left the
Conservative Party for the Liberals in 1904, he
declared that his new party’s policies would
advance ‘the cause of the left out millions’
(cited in WH Greenleaf (1983) The British
Political Tradition. Volume II: The Ideological
Heritage, pp. 142–143). Churchill had in mind
a society in which individuals might enjoy
wide freedom in a socially just context.
Something similar was in George Orwell’s
mind in 1940 when he contemplated the pos-
sibility of a social order in which ‘socialism
could preserve and even enlarge the atmos-
phere of liberalism’ (George Orwell (1957)
Inside the Whale and Other Essays, p. 48).
Orwell’s statement and that of Churchill sup-
port the view that Skidelsky and Marquand
have traced the unravelling not simply of the
post-war settlement but of a long-lived and
morally attractive tradition.
Richard Mullender
(University of Newcastle)
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916668283
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The British System of Government and
its Historical Development by Christopher
Edward Taucar. Montreal, QC, Canada;
Kingston, ON, Canada: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2014. 304pp., £22.99 (p/b), ISBN
9780773544291
Provoked by the activism of Canadian judges,
the primary purpose of this book is a polemical
one directed at the judicial review of legisla-
tion. The author undertakes a lengthy historical
survey to ascertain the main rules which make
up the ‘British system of government’ (BSOG)
to serve as a measuring stick against which the
actions of state actors can be evaluated (p. 9).
BSOG is defined to mean ‘the powers of the
main state institutions and their jurisdiction’
and ‘deals with the legal status of the elements
involved in the system of government and their
legal relation to each other more precisely’ (p.
8). Despite BSOG being a broader term than
‘constitution’ (p. 8), the book does not attempt
to be comprehensive in defining the British
institutions of government. For instance, the
author considers that a full detailing of the
executive branch is not necessary to understand
the BSOG (p. 179). The author’s main conclu-
sion is the well-understood principle that the
Westminster Parliament is sovereign and that
there are no legal limitations on its legislative
power that can be enforced by the courts. Many
other principles are ignored, perhaps because
they do not suit the author’s polemical purposes.
Those hoping for original research or inter-
pretations will be disappointed, as this work
consists mostly of summaries of other scholar-
ship. Unfortunately, the descriptions of public
law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
do not refer to any of the best recent historical
literature, and there are clear errors, such as the
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