Introduction
How odd â perhaps bizarre â it is that the approval of both Houses of Parliament is required for pieces of technical, and often trivial, subordinate legislation, whereas it is not needed at all before men and women can be committed to the possibility of disfigurement or death. (Brazier 1999: 123)âWe must understand from previous conflicts that war is not some sort of hokey-cokey concept; once youâre in, youâre inâŠâ. (Jim Sheridan, House of Commons, 29 August 2013, Debate and Motion Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons, Hansard col 1447)
This work is an exploration of the brief rise and fall of what was considered to be a new Parliamentary convention on authorising war in Britain. The work was prompted by the British governmentâs airstrikes against Syria in April 2018. The government refused to recall Parliament and also acted in the face of majority popular opposition to the action. Yet in the preceding five years it had been widely assumed that Parliamentary authority over war and conflict had been established, displacing the historic Royal Prerogative executive authority over war (Strong 2014; Mello 2017; Cabinet Office 2011).
The convention seemed to be established firmly in 2013, and then reaffirmed in 2015, when David Cameron went to Parliament to ask for authorisation for British airstrikes in Syria. In 2013, Parliament voted not to authorise airstrikes against the Syrian government in response to the use of chemical weapons. In 2015, Parliament voted to authorise British participation in coalition airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. Whilst it was the case that Parliamentary authority remained at the level of an (assumed) convention rather than on a statutory footing, and thus open to change, there was a widespread belief that the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameronâs âdefeatâ (Gaskarth 2016) in 2013 over intervention in Syria had established the convention. As Malcolm Chalmers the Deputy Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) commented after the 2013 vote:
It is now hard to see how any UK Government could undertake significant military action without the support of Parliament, or indeed of the wider public. And it is difficult to see such support being given unless there is a clear national interest involved, or if military operations are undertaken with the imprimatur of a UN Security Council (UNSC) mandate - at least until the shadows of Iraq and Afghanistan have faded much further from the national consciousness. (Chalmers 2013)
Yet in April 2018, when faced with exactly the same circumstances as Cameron in 2013 and proposing exactly the same action, Theresa May chose not to ask Parliament for authorisation. May did not repudiate the convention, rather, May argued that the military action did not meet the criteria for the Parliamentary convention. However, the justifications given by her government do not stand up to scrutiny. Moreover, this was a military intervention in a highly precarious and tense situation that could have resulted in a much broader conflict. This work considers what happened and what the implications are for the Parliamentary convention.
What then has happened to the Parliamentary convention? Has the executive reasserted its power over the legislature? At the core of the book is a concern with fundamental questions of legitimate authority when it comes to potentially existential policy questions. Who should have the right to decide on war and peace? This is both a normative question, who in principle should have the authority, but also a particularly pertinent political question for post-Cold War Britain. Successive governments of different political persuasions have engaged in âwars of choiceâ and the consequences of these wars are still central to international and domestic politics today. The question of legislativeâexecutive relations and foreign policy is one that is fundamentally an issue of democracy and legitimacy. Foreign policy decisions of war and peace are ultimately political and moral decisions.
Moreover, successive post-Cold War British governments have a history of being less than scrupulous when it comes to making the case for military interventions and foreign policy. In the case of the Iraq war, it is an established fact that the Labour government led by Tony Blair actively misled the public as to the case for war (for example, see The Iraq Inquiry 2016, commonly known as the Chilcot Report after the Chair John Chilcot). Astonishingly, this catastrophic intervention and ensuing war that resulted in the loss of life of hundreds of thousands of people and created ongoing chaos in the Middle East is now being treated as an âEnglish disagreementâ with warnings that we should not âoverlearnâ the lessons of Iraq (Financial Times 2013). The Libyan intervention too was premised upon a case that was weak and, to put it charitably, was âover-soldâ by David Cameron (House of Commons 2016). The most recent Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report on Britainâs role in secret rendition demonstrates an alarming degree of dishonesty from Labour and Conservative governments when it comes to foreign policy (Intelligence and Security Committee 2018).
A concern about declining legitimacy and therefore the question of legitimate authority was one of the main drivers behind the development of the new Parliamentary convention. It was broadly felt that in a situation of declining legitimacy and trust, serious constitutional changes and/or major political decisions should be authorised by Parliament, and by extension the electorate (this will be discussed detail in this chapter). Conversely, a sense of weakness and uncertainty has also led the current government to retreat from the new Parliamentary convention for fear that Parliament would not support the executive decision. But Parliament itself does not seem to wish to assert itâs own authority, and more importantly, our authority, over the executive.
If in the space of four years two Prime Ministers, of the same political party, can respond in diametrically opposed ways to similar circumstances, it can reasonably be argued that the new Parliamentary convention is weak to the point of non-existence. May has learnt an important lesson from Cameronâs requests for democratic authorisation from the electorate whether on bombing Syria or leaving the European Union; when you ask for democratic authorisation for a political policy the answer may not be the one that you want. If the convention can simply be ignored, if the government of the day worries the answer will be âwrongâ, then it does not exist.
However, it will be argued that rather than a strong executive driving rough shod over Parliament, it was Parliament itself that did not assert itself and hold the executive to account. The legislature failed in April 2018 to assert Parliamentary rights even retrospectively. The fall and rise of the Royal Prerogative can be understood in the context of the declining authority of the executive and a weak legislature that does not wish to assert its own authority and ultimately that of the electorate.
Thus this work concludes somewhat differently than my initial thoughts at the start. I had thought to confidently argue for greater formalisation of the convention (which argument will still be made) but the problem is deeper. Whether convention or written constitution, or statute, legislative authority over and control of the executive is at its heart a political matter. Without the political will to enforce its own dominance, Parliamentary sovereignty is of little account. Moreover, Parliament in Britain, and in other representative democracies, is but a conduit for the expressed will of the citizens. When it comes to foreign and security policy post-Cold War, the British government has played a far more belligerent role than British public opinion supports. Thus Parliament is failing in its duty to hold the executive to account on our behalf.
This introductory chapter proceeds as follows. First of all, the work is set in an academic context, that of an existing body of literature analysing the changing locus of what are often called war powers in the British political system. This literature is part of a larger field of work that has emerged post-Cold War that engages with executiveâlegislative relations and foreign and security policy. The chapter then gives an overview of the rest of the work and of the main arguments therein.
War Powers and the Changing Relationship Between the Executive and the Legislature in Democratic States
In Britain, the power and authority to declare war has historically been an executive power (Strong 2014; Payne 2008). Following on from the Iraq war that began in 2003 the question of authorisation of war became an important political, constitutional and academic discussion; (for example Payne 2008; Blick 2014; Strong 2014, 2018; McCormack 2016; Gaskarth 2016; Kaarbo and Kenealy 2016; Mello 2017; Kaarbo 2018; Fikfak and Hooper 2018; House of Commons 2004; House of Lords 2006).
The discussion of ...