Rishi Sunak has told the Conservative Party conference that British politics are ‘broken.’  That will make it more difficult for his party to resist changes in the way we do politics – constitutional reform, as we nerds put it.

It was the Conservatives that broke British politics, of course – or rather, populists inside and outside the party, cheered on by right-wing media (and American and Russian encouragement and funding) that swept aside established conventions on political behaviour and governmental restraint.  A major new report on political reform, jointly published by the Institute for Government and the Bennett Institute for Public Policy in Cambridge, notes the breakdown of constraints on executive behaviour, attacks on judges and the rule of law, attempts to bypass parliamentary scrutiny and the steady erosion of local government that has characterised the past eight years.

Four prime ministers since 2015, seven chancellors of the exchequer, nine secretaries of state for education – constant ministerial churn, changes in policy announced without much preparation or consultation and then reversed by the minister’s successor.  This single-party government has given Britain an object lesson in incompetent government.

The Conservative conference demonstrated how ungovernable the Conservative Party has become.  Liz Truss peddled her free market nonsense to a packed fringe meeting.  Ministers attacked policies that no-one had yet put forward. Danny Kruger, representing the American-influenced evangelical right wing, channelled conspiracy theories about the threat that climate change efforts were intended to bring ‘world government’.   Nigel Farage swanned round the conference, wearing his GB News pass: not a delegate, but a highly visible presence, benefitting like other right-wing populists from generous GB News funding.

Keir Starmer in his Labour conference speech almost echoed the prime minister.  ‘Our politics feels broken’, he declared; ‘we must win the war against the hoarders in Westminster, give power back and put communities in control.’  But beyond a reference to strengthening local government, he has said nothing specific about political reform beyond making it clear that he is opposed to changing the voting system.  He gives every impression that he intends to govern within the same centralised, executive-dominated structure the Conservatives have used and abused, with only minor adjustments to improve relations with the UK’s three devolved governments.

Given how low trust in Britain’s politics has sunk, and how difficult the choices facing any incoming government will prove, it’s unlikely that this will be enough to rebuild the ‘partnership between people and politics’ that Starmer promises to achieve.  And the danger facing Britain after 5-10 years of Labour government would be a reinvigorated, well-funded, right-wing populist Conservative Party offering itself to a disillusioned public as the only alternative our political system provides.

Outside the mutual accusations of two-party politics, and the hysteria of the right-wing media, there has been a good deal of informed and expert analysis of what has gone wrong.  The Institute for Government’s Review of the British Constitution draws on substantial preparatory papers, and proposes reforms that an incoming government could easily introduce to entrench constitutional acts, parliamentary scrutiny of constitutional proposals, and public confidence in the processes of change.

In July the IfG and University College London’s Constitution Unit jointly published Options for Reform, which listed distinguished ‘Quick Wins’ on coming into government from moderate changes and longer-term major reforms. The Institute for Public Policy Research has published several papers on ‘renewing democracy’, and Labour itself last December published the report of the ‘Commission on Britain’s Future, chaired by Gordon Brown, focussing on relations between different levels of government and a transformed second chamber.

Little of this, however, has attracted public attention.  No-one wins elections by campaigning for constitutional reform.  Yet without structural change to the way we play politics and are governed, popular disillusion will deepen and anti-democratic movements will grow.

Liberals Democrats should care passionately about the quality of democracy.  We need to make the case that good government requires institutional change – and that the continuation of poor government, over-centralised, executive-dominated, remote from popular engagement, jumping from one immediate decision to another, will further damage our social cohesion, our public services, and our prospects for economic growth.

* William Wallace is Liberal Democrat spokesman on constitutional issues in the Lords.