This week’s announcement of a referendum on whether MPs should be elected under the alternative vote system is the latest example of Britain’s piecemeal approach to constitutional reform. Surely we should step back and take a broader view of how we govern the UK?

That’s certainly the view of a group of lawyers and academics led by Stephen Hockman QC and Professor Vernon Bogdanor. They ask whether we should continue to introduce reforms on an individual basis ‘without at least seeking to move towards a comprehensive constitutional framework for our country, accessible to and comprehensible by all’.

With the support of a distinguished working group, Hockman and Bogdanor have written a paper for the Justice Journal which they will launch tonight at the House of Lords, an institution that has suffered more than most from piecemeal reform.

Although the paper is called Towards a Codified Constitution, the authors insist that they are not advocating a written constitution themselves. ‘That is for the politicians and the people to decide,’ they say. ‘Our purpose is the more limited one of analysing the main problems which need to be resolved and the key questions which need to be answered if, in the future, it is decided to enact a constitution.’

In the 10 pages that follow they raise scores of searching questions, ranging from the membership of a constitutional commission to whether London should become the constitutional capital of the UK.

The exercise has a valuable purpose in demonstrating just how difficult it would be to codify Britain’s unwritten constitution. Should the new document set out its aims in a preamble? What force would this have? Would there be one constitution for the UK or four for its constituent parts?

Rights are particularly difficult. Should the constitution include a bill of rights? Would it incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights? What new rights should be included? How should rights be qualified?

And what should the constitution say about political parties, about devolution, about international relations? How should it cope with conventions, which are respected although unenforceable?

‘Can conventions be stated in sufficiently precise terms? If not, is that a weakness or a strength?’ It all sounds rather like an Oxbridge entrance paper.

Finally, the most difficult issue of all: what status should the constitution have? Should it give the courts power to strike down legislation that judges regard as unconstitutional?

Even assuming that there was only one right answer to these questions, it would no doubt take teams of lawyers several years to come up with a reasoned draft. All the more remarkable, then, that Richard Gordon QC has done just that. His Repairing Britain’s Politics: A Blueprint for Constitutional Change was published by Hart in February. We can infer something about the lead times for learned journals from the fact Gordon was sent a draft of the Hockman-Bogdanor paper in time to include acknowledgements at proof stage while Hockman and Bogdanor did not receive Gordon’s book in time to return the compliment.

Gordon has drafted a constitution of 248 articles, accompanied by explanatory notes on clauses that have now become almost a constitutional convention in themselves. Like Hockman and Bogdanor, Gordon insists that his book is ‘not a campaign advocating a written constitution; rather, the intention is to initiate a debate as to whether we should have one’.

Gordon’s book has indeed been the subject of a couple of public debates – I chaired one of them and so should declare an interest – but constitutional reform has not exactly dominated the political agenda, either during or after the election. And yet, as Gordon points out, ‘cosmetic, short-term tinkering’ is not the answer. He gives, as an example, the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 – ‘rushed through in indecent haste and [the] victim of appalling drafting in a frenzied response to the clamour over expenses’. That, in turn, was amended by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 – although the main purpose of this legislation was to put the civil service on to a statutory footing. We wait to see whether the new government will bring it into force.

Gordon points out that the 2010 act lacks many of the reforms that were originally envisaged, such as refashioning the role of the attorney general. But reformers should surely welcome the prospect that civil servants will no longer be employed under the amorphous provisions of the royal prerogative.

Despite well-meaning critics such as Hockman, Bogdanor and Gordon, piecemeal reform like this is all we are likely to get for the foreseeable future. The constitutional project is too huge and the rewards too nebulous for anything else. This year, the government may implement civil service reforms. Next year, it may bring in the alternative vote. But the fact that we are not creating a comprehensive codified constitution must not stop us bringing in more modest reforms from time to time; the best should not be the enemy of the good.

Indeed, there is a lot to be said for keeping some of the flexibility of an unwritten constitution. When political expediency demanded the creation of a deputy prime minister with responsibility for constitutional reform, it was the easiest thing in the world to give Nick Clegg a salary as Lord President of the Council and put him in the Cabinet Office as its senior minister. Such a bespoke solution would have been harder to deliver with a codified constitution. Which is why I can’t see Clegg rushing to create one.