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If memory serves me well, as he awaited his coronation as Leader of the Labour Party, Gordon Brown suggested that he would consider giving the right to declare war to the House of Commons rather than retain it as a former Royal Prerogative currently “owned” by the Prime Minister of the day.

This was an intellectually flabby thing to have said lacking any clear understanding of the historical context of such a power and indeed how it operates or should operate in real terms. As the number two during Blair’s various decisions to commit UK Forces to war zones, it is quite a frightening thing to hear him say that, just how bad were Cabinet relations during those times, just how disconnected from any decision making and taking responsibility was Brown ? From the serious lack of equipment our troops went in with due to no spending, far, far away it would seem.

Declaring War Remains…

Whatever way this Labour Government has behaved behind closed doors since 1997, this is the kind of Parliamentary change that should be avoided, war is too serious to do anything other than rest it on the shoulders of one person. True, the rules behind how a Cabinet works and the shared responsibility, probably do need tightening up because they originally evolved on the basis of each member having personal honour and the idea of service to a Higher Order which is no longer the case in the world of the professional politician. Less a case of hard choices, more a demand for soft toilet paper.

In reality and most instances, Parliament always gets to vote on war one way or another but the reason for retaining the power is that sometimes circumstances arise suddenly and one cannot let a potential enemy think that a British Prime Minister has to “go and ask his mother before he can play”. In fact, it is even more important in these days of “asymmetric warfare” than previously because via the web, extremists of all kinds know that they can reach into democracies and there will always be a George Galloway they can easily influence to gob off their message.

So Where Am I Going With This ?

Essentially it is to demonstrate that some things need “renewal” but others require change. That the Prime Minister of the day should retain the right to declare war must be “renewed”. That Tony Blair ran a kitchen cabinet and his formal Cabinet allowed him to get away with that, clearly must be changed not because of Tony Blair and a toothless cabinet but because there seems to be the need for a formal “separation of powers” which was not required in earlier generations of politicians.

Should this lead to a formal process whereby a Prime Minister could be rejected by his/her cabinet and therefore forced to face a “Confidence Vote” on the floor of the House ? Frankly I don’t know but it is a question that should be raised because it is fraught with a number of conflicting issues and whilst making no claim to a specialist “constitutional law” qualification the following seem obvious to me but then, I don’t get out much.

Looking at a Problem

The current situation is that a particular party wins a General Election in other words has more MPs overall than any other party or coalition of others in the House. By convention the Queen invites the Leader of such a party to form a Government and that “leader”, whoever is the party leader, will become the Prime Minister but, the alternative title for a PM in the House of Commons is, “The First Amongst Equals”.

Amid falling “Party Membership” and therefore financial contributions and polling effort, all parties have given their registered members some say in who the “party leader” is via internal polling but are they all guilty of “…after the horse bolted” ? I am to the “right of centre” and a natural ‘Tory’ in many ways but at the grass roots I will never be blindly ‘Tory’ and drink the water out of the fish tank or the bath – bollocks.

I am probably like most people who bother to take an interest, I am an “issue voter” and the Conservative, Labour, Liberal, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Fein, DUP, Scots Nats et al parties in most ways represent the ‘past’ and in Northern Ireland, a very bloody one too but most definitely, they are YESTERDAY, both yours and mine because they represent “yesterday’s issues” rather than today’s.

It must be particularly galling for some former IRA, SNP or a Welsh cottage burner to accept that what they ‘fought for’ was ‘then’ and having won, is taken for granted by a later generation, the “So what” must really hurt but, it is the way it is. I suspect that the real ‘issue’ that I have today, many share right across the political and national spectrum, “No Bastard seems to be listening, the lights are on but no one is at home and wherever they are, they are spending my money and our national resources – they are all scum !”

Strangely, still the same issue…

So we leave the Prime Minister with the power to declare war… but we want the Cabinet’s “collective responsibility” beefed up so that in the future if we have a lunatic PM and we do seem to have hit two in a row, so before we march on Moscow, the Cabinet could force the PM to face a vote of “No Confidence” on the floor of the House. Now let’s follow this one through a bit and consider the implications.

The Queen ‘invites’ the majority leader to form a government. If a PM loses a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the House, he must present his/her resignation to the Queen who may call a dissolution of parliament and therefore a General Election or, she may invite someone else from the same party to form a new government. However, if the blue rinses from the Labour (or any other party) can decide who is their leader, as last year during the prolonged handover between Blair and Brown, who and can, the Queen decide who should be invited to form the next government ?

And NO, it will not be the same as last year, that was leisurely, if a PM lost a confidence vote, the Sovereign would have to make a decision on the spot and the ‘default one’ would be a dissolution and a General Election but, that is not always appropriate where one party has a large majority. Although because of cowardice we shall never know, in the Autumn of 2007, Brown fostered the idea that he might spring a General Election but, he was not even halfway through a parliamentary term and had a substantial majority.

Constitutionally, Her Majesty would have been perfectly within her rights to not call a ‘dissolution’, accepted Brown’s resignation and instead called upon anybody else to try and form a government. It should be borne in mind that whilst the “Party System” has served us tolerably well for the most part, MPs are supposed to represent the views of their constituents before their party so that in ‘theory’ any individual who could command a reasonable following across the House and albeit on a narrow range of issues, could be invited to form a government.

Technically it doesn’t have to be just one national party because the modern parties all grew out of specific single issues originally, our parliament should still be individual MPs representing us, rather than their own personal careers and financial advantage which makes us look like a banana republic, at the national level. I once referred to this as the “Rump Parliament” of our times but I was wrong – it is more the “Plasticine Parliament” by which I mean, if we frighten them enough individually with losing their seats, they will individually do as they are told because they really are that self-interested and gutless.