I’m a little late on this one but never mind. On June 13 there was a parliamentary debate to mark the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war. Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, argued that ‘war is a matter of conscience‘ and…
That is why, when MPs are faced with a decision about whether to go to war in future, we cannot have a situation where the government of the day tells the story and we are expected to take it at face value.
If parliament is serious about learning the lessons of Iraq, then it must establish a constitutional convention that votes on going to war are not subject to party whipping.
Well, nobody is ever obliged to take anything at face value, and often there are strong reasons for not doing so, but for the rest Philip Cowley tries to put Lucas straight on this proposal:
Think about what it means when a party has a free vote on an issue. It is saying that it has no formal position on that issue. Officially at least, it is saying that it doesn’t mind what the outcome of the vote is. This is tricky enough to justify when it applies to some of the issue[s] where free votes normally apply – witness the pressure recently for Labour to whip the votes on gay marriage, on the grounds that it would be wrong for the party to say that it had no position on an issue that advocates saw as one of human rights. Insofar as there is a justification for treating issues like gay rights or abortion as ‘free’ it is that they are somehow not central to political debate and ‘cross-party’ (although they are, in practice, not half as cross-party as is claimed).
But it would be difficult to make this case about military action – and even harder for the party of government to do so. Is the Prime Minister really supposed to say that his or her government have no position on the issue? That there will be a vote in the House of Commons on going to war and the government do not have a position on it? That they are ambivalent on the issue? Imagine the Paxman interview: ‘So, Prime Minister, your government doesn’t mind whether we go to war or not?’ The idea is absurd.