OF ALL the divvy thing you hear people say, on the bus or in the pub, the words: ‘It’s a free country’ are the ones which grate most on my nerves.

We don’t live in a free country. We live in a country in which a nebulous basket of ‘rights’ that most of us couldn’t even list – which were cobbled together in law a few years back by people we’ve never heard of – are alleged to protect our freedoms.

These ‘rights’ fall under an Act which, for all its sincere hope of doing the right thing, doesn’t actually give us the right considered so important it’s been at the forefront of the American constitution since 1791.

‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’

That one little line guarantees the rights of each and every US citizen to be able to express their opinion and contemplate those of others knowing that anyone who tries to stop them is committing an act against their very foundation. Even the President.

It’s the reason that CNN journalist Jim Acosta – at the centre of a political storm last week - is able to sue the White House for allegedly abridging his freedom as an accredited correspondent to ask the questions to which we’d all like an answer.

But then, in America they know what their rights are just as they know their constitution because it’s written down.

We have no such luck.

We’re still fiddling around with some quaint arrangement called an ‘unwritten constitution’.

Those in power – many of whom in the House of Lords have never faced an election in their lives – believe that this is a Very Good Thing.

But when you ask, no one can actually tell you why it’s good.

The end result of this is that I have not a clue what my actual rights are, just as I’ve no idea really what is the obligation of the state to me as a citizen.

The same people who insist that our unwritten constitution is a precious thing wouldn’t, I’m guessing, hand over £1 million for a new house without demanding some kind of watertight paperwork that proves that they actually own the item they’ve paid for.

Likewise all those share certificates they own. Are racehorse and Rolls-Royce ownership papers and birth certificates unwritten? Are they hell.

So why does it apply to the conventions of our country? No one tells you that. Just like, when you ask, those who are happy with the unwritten status quo start looking shifty or at their watch when you demand to know which bit of the Human Rights Act specifically guarantees the right to freedom of speech, and of the press?

They can’t tell you because it doesn’t. And they can’t tell you which bit of the constitution refers to this because it’s not written down.

Of course, we might have had a better deal on the modern rights front if we actually had a modern system of government. But we don’t. Shamefully, almost uniquely, we have a second chamber which a) isn’t elected and b) you can, if you play your cards right, buy your way into. And to think we laugh at Zimbabwe.

Like our unwritten constitution the House of Lords is a giant, screaming, undemocratic embarrassment. THEY. ARE. NOT. ELECTED.

We sit there fretting and bickering over Brexit and complaining that we will somehow not be modern if we don’t stay fully in Europe. When the plain fact is that this country is still, when it comes to democracy, stuck in the early part of the century before last.

Leaving the European Union upsets lot of people.

But, with all the upheaval, let’s take the chance it offers and re-make ourselves anew as a country.

Let’s have an elected senate for our second chamber and let’s have a written constitution. And let’s have a Bill of Rights. Our rights, decided by us.