The passage from youthful idealism - it is black, or it is white, there's no blurring - to the steady state where I find myself now, someone whose formerly stark, unambiguous ideals have been rewoven into a blur of shades and tones, has be one of the most common and talked about personal transformations .

Still, there are some things I'm beginning to question now, even if it's only around the edges, that I really did think were foundation beliefs, and thus unshakable. And that's this: I'm not so certain Britain needs a written constitution. I did for years, still do, but I've started to question that insistence more and more recently.

A constitution codifies and guarantee rights and obligations, yet, and how often in life is there a yet, it seals those frequently hard won gains into the permafrost. What any constitution does at the moment of completion is to become a time capsule; it represents what was regarded as imperative at the time. It's future proofing in that it prevents whatever egregious behaviours were happening pre constitution from happening ever again

How hard is it then to adapt and modify it to successfully respond to inevitably changing socio-economic, cultural circumstances. This is the paradox of any constitution: they fix in stone what was right and proper to fix in stone, but that very act then ensures future arguments and probably rancorous disputes on not just how to, but actually whether to change.

A document fit for an eighteenth century society cannot be fit in every single respect for the demands of the twenty-first century. It just can't. But many countries, and certainly many citizens of those countries believe it can, going to all sorts of lengths to try to prove it. That for me is wrong: there's only so much elasticity in any document; take it to far, and the argument moves into dangerous sophistry. Quibbling over single words, the position of a word, it's meaning then compared to now.

Perhaps, Britain does actually benefit from not having a written constitution, I'm now starting to think. The jumble of charters, individual laws, customs, conventions, the apparent opacity of how we govern ourselves is actually our strength, and it's that elasticity ensures flexibility and resilience.

Don't think though, that I am ignoring the unique symbolism of a constitution. I know what they mean to so many countries, lives risked, lives lost, hopes dashed, hopes finally made into flesh. My point is two-fold: firstly, Britain has been lucky, somehow we've muddled by; my second point is push the notion that a constitution must move with the times. It must.