Study of a Janet Daley's Paper in the Daily Telegraph (June 23rd, 2009)

Etude d’un article de Janet Daley extrait de The Daily Telegraph du 23 Juin 2009.

    In June 2009, it has been discovered in Great Britain that some of the members of Parliament had been abusing their privileges and thereby stealing money from taxpayers and damaging the moral image of the British principles. The exposure of corruptions within the British Parliament created a real national scandal that questioned the legitimacy of the non-written Constitution that the country has had for centuries. On that subject, it would be interesting to study an article in The Daily Telegraph, a mostly Conservative national and international UK newspaper in which this debate is discussed. In this text, an American columnist for the Sunday Telegraph, Janet Daley, cleverly exposes her opinion about the will of a part of the population to draft a Constitution in which all rights and duties of the government are clearly defined. Being Conservative, she stands for the non-modification of the Constitution and she uses her personal experience to compare it to the « checks and balances » American system. Why is Janet Daley’s advocacy for keeping the current type of Constitution so convincing? In this interest it would be legitimate to study the different aspects that are discussed in the article. In fact, the context of this debate opposes the advantages of a written constitution and its disadvantages, becoming a praise of the British government.

A constitution is defined by a set of essential principles and laws established in order to govern an organisation, a state or a country. Most of the nations have a single constitutional document. However, the United Kingdom’s Constitution is largely unwritten; but since the corruption scandal, the idea of a written constitution has emerged. In this article, several points are studied :
the author writes that “ there is much excited talk of a written constitution, even among people who would once have regarded such a thing as...