Corbyn's latest daft idea

There is a difficult balancing act to strike between a responsible parliament holding the executive to account over foreign policy - particularly since Iraq and the Chilcot report means it is not entirely surprising that fewer voters are willing to trust any government - and protecting the lives of British servicemen and women.

If you do not want to get the people who put their lives on the line to defend our country killed needlessly by warning the enemy that they are coming, you sometimes need to give them the authority to at without signalling our intentions through a parliamentary vote.

The cartoonist Cummings made the point like this during the Falklands war

 

Hence it is spectacularly daft that Jeremy Corbyn has now said he want a "war powers act" which would stop ministers deploying British special forces without parliamentary approval.

Iain Martin put it very well here,

"Special forces that require a parliamentary vote before they take out an Islamist bunker won’t be very special or forceful. As someone on Twitter put it: why not just send ISIS a postcard ahead of each operation? In suggesting a Commons vote on SAS deployment it is almost as though Corbyn doesn’t want the West to have any tools to defend itself. Funny that."

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