Is Britain On The Verge Of A Constitutional Crisis?

The resignation of the Speaker of the British House of Commons over the expenses scandal caught American attention for about 10 seconds. It deserves more. British friends are speculating that the country may be about to experience a collapse of support for all parties, as happened in Italy in the early 1990s. Read Fraser Nelson in em>The Spectator<:

The Hansard Society, which assiduously charts public attitudes to politics, found that a dismal 19 per cent agree that ‘parliament is working for me’ — and this was before the levels of expense abuse were exposed. The society now argues that Britain is facing a ‘very serious moment for representative democracy’. This is not 1997, when the general election was seen (however naively) as a moment of national purification: Tony Blair’s ‘new dawn’. In 2009, no Westminster party is seen by the public as ‘the answer’ to their grievances. ...

Most under-45s in Britain don’t vote, and just a third of under-25s do. The Westminster system is sustained by the generations which still regard voting as a civic duty. Yet it is a grave error to talk loosely about ‘apathy’. Polls taken among abstainers show that a third of them are nonetheless active in charities, campaigning groups or community organisations. These active citizens do not want to authorise or lend their support to the disgraced Westminster class. They see a village of corrupt oligarchs, busily lining their pockets, smearing each other in email campaigns, and accruing power. When these sceptical voters are asked in elections which of the discredited political fat cats they would like to run the country on their behalf, the answer, increasingly, is: ‘none of them’.