The House | Giving MPs a say before sending troops to the frontline emasculates both Parliament and the executive

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Now, you may well think that going to war is such an important matter that it should always be decided by a Commons vote. Yet that brings with it real military, constitutional and strategic complications.

Why so? There are five main reasons. First, such a whipped vote (Iraq 2003, Syria 2013) has the effect of removing Parliament’s subsequent right to criticise what the PM has done. It emasculates, rather than strengthens, Parliament.

Second, it delays. A PM need not ask for a vote on an incoming ICBM. But what about swift and secret deterrence elsewhere? Would we vote on supporting America boarding ‘shadow’ tankers?

Third, to persuade a reluctant House, the PM might be more open with intelligence. Backbenchers would also need legal and military advice, which might well be ‘spun’ to persuade them. Blair’s ‘Dodgy Dossier’ springs to mind.

Fourth, such a vote ‘politicises’ the decision. A governing party with a slim parliamentary majority might lose any such vote through opposition political opportunism. Backbenchers seeking re-election would only vote for obvious, and more or less popular military engagements. But vital wars which are not endorsed in the tabloids would become very difficult and justiciable in the courts.

Fifth, ‘democratisation of warfare’ means that service people may die against a background of squabbling MPs. Think of the consequences for the troops’ and their families’ morale.

So any populist merit in the ‘democratisation’ of war is trumped by the need for military action to be decided swiftly and in secret by the executive and then scrutinised by Parliament. That is why we relied on the war-making powers of the “Royal Prerogative” in 400 wars since 1700.

Crimea, the First and Second World Wars, the Falklands conflict, the First Gulf War and even the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan happened without a vote in Parliament.

That principle has only been breached on two occasions – in 2003, over Iraq, and in 2013, when the Commons decided not to bomb Syria, extending Bashar al-Assad’s despotic regime as a result. The only two war-making decisions taken not by the prime minister of the time but by Parliament were demonstrably wrong.

That fact was realised by April 2016, when the convention was reversed in a statement by then-defence secretary Michael Fallon, with assurances that Parliament would be kept informed of “significant major operations and deployments of the armed forces”.

Then in 2018, Theresa May struck al-Assad, with no prior parliamentary approval, “the Cabinet agreed that it was right to take military action… The government have the right to act quickly in the national interest… These are indeed grave and difficult decisions for a prime minister to take”.

So, over 20 years, the constitutional convention had moved from reliance on the Royal Prerogative to go to war (Gulf, 1990), through a parliamentary vote on the matter (Iraq, 2003; Syria, 2013) to a complete reinstatement of the status quo ante.

The Prime Minister’s heavy duty is to decide on military action. The Commons‘ role is to scrutinise what he has done. ‘Democratisation’ of warfare would seriously undermine our ability to defend ourselves and help ensure the security of the world.