Look Who it Was Random video

Crowdsourcing a New UK Constitution

3,096 views · Published 16 October 2013 · 1:34:39 · Indexed 4 November 2026

Channel: LSE · 2013 · Education

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Speaker(s): David Blunkett MP, Richard Gordon QC, Carol Harlow, Dr Lea Ypi 
Chair: Professor Conor Gearty

Recorded on 8 October 2013 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

The UK has no constitution written down in one document. Instead it has laws, conventions, practices, activities scattered all over the place that constitutional lawyers gather together and describe as the UK constitution. In a unique project, LSE's Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and Department of Law are coming together with the LSE Public Policy Group and LSE Democratic Audit to pioneer the crowdsourcing of a new UK constitution to ask members of the public to participate in, advise on and eventually to draft a new UK constitution. Join an expert panel to have your say on what should be included and to create this important new document.

David Blunkett is a British Labour Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, having represented Sheffield Brightside from 1987 to 2010.

Richard Gordon is a barrister at Brick Court Chambers and is widely recognised as one of the leading silks in Constitutional Law, Administrative and Public Law, and Human Rights/Civil Liberties. Increasingly, he is recommended in judicial review for EU and Competition Law cases. 

Carol Harlow is emeritus professor of law at LSE. She is Queens Counsel (honoris causa) (1996); Fellow and Council Member of the British Academy (1999, 2004); Fellow of the London School of Economics (2005); Emeritus Member of Society of Legal Scholars (2005). She was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship in 2002.

Dr Lea Ypi is a Lecturer in Political Theory in the Government Department, London School of Economics, and Adjunct Professor in Philosophy at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.

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