CLARE SHORT RETURNS

by RAY FLEMING l CLARE Short has been somewhat sidelined since she resigned from the Cabinet in muddled circumstances over the Iraq war, but she has not ben idle. Yesterday she sought the second reading in the House of Commons of her Armed Forces (parliamentary approval for participation in armed conflict) Bill. This is a direct result of her experiences as a member of the official Cabinet when what might be called an inner “sofa cabinet” was seeing all the key papers and taking the decisions on Iraq. Ms Short's Bill would ensure that no British government could take the country to war without the endorsement of Parliament. This might seem to most people to be a commonsense and thoroughly democratic idea but with depressing predictability it is being opposed by the Prime Minister on the grounds that it would deny British forces the element of surprise that might be vital in some future conflict. In an effort to meet this point Ms Short has added a clause to her Bill that would allow the Prime Minister to send the troops in first and then immediately seek retrospective approval from Parliament. But that hasn't satisfied Mr Blair either. To be realistic, Clare Short's Bill does not have much of a chance of becoming law. But the very fact that she has drafted it and brought it before the Commons will serve a valuable purpose in drawing attention to the way in which any British Prime Minister is beyond democratic control in one of the most important decisions he or she has to take. The Bill would remedy this anomaly by requiring the prime minister of the day to submit to the House of Commons and the House of Lords a report setting out why he thought it necessary to go to war and to cite the legal authority for doing so. If Mr Blair had been obliged to do this over Iraq we would not have the subsequent sleight of hand over the reason for the invasion (weapons of mass destruction and/or deposing Saddam Hussein) and, indeed, he might have had difficulty in providing the legal authority. Clare Short's Bill is an idea whose time has come. But, sadly, it may have to wait a while longer!