OK, what now?

Those of us with an attention span longer than a gnat's will remember the debacle of the Iraq War and how this country was rushed into military action without any plan about what to do afterwards. And the result? Destablisation of the Middle East and a chain of conflicts which have seen ancient cities reduced to rubble, hundreds of thousands lose their lives, hundreds of thousands more wounded or maimed and millions flee into exile. We remember how that same mistake was repeated in Libya. And now there’s Syria.

Theresa May didn’t just embark on her military adventure in Syria without first debating the issue in our supposedly sovereign parliament, she did so without even bothering to give a coherent explanation of her reasons for doing so or presenting any meaningful idea of what she sought to achieve by it. There’s no strategy, there’s no plan. She reacted dismissively when it was put to her that she was merely following the American line by joining in the attack on Syria and insisted angrily that she acted out of her own principles. But she couldn’t actually articulate what those principles might be. Neither did she bother to give us the evidence.

To use Mrs May’s favourite phrase, let us be very clear. There may very well have been a chemical attack in Douma carried out by the Syrian regime against its opponents - and its own people. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if that was the case. But the real point is that the British government has lost all right to take unilateral action on any such attack without incontrovertible proof being presented by a neutral source and without the events being investigated by an unimpeachable international organisation. The assertion of the British government that bad people have done bad things is no longer enough, because the British government has lied about these matters in the past with disastrous results for the countries which are the subject of the military action. It has lied more than once and it has always got away with its lies even after the lie has been exposed. Where there are no consequences for the liars for lying, there is no incentive to stop lying.

That’s the issue here. It’s an issue of trust. It’s not that anyone trusts in the assertions of the Syrians and of Bashir Assad or Vladimir Putin that we should all move along because there is nothing to see in Douma. It’s that we don’t trust the British government and we are no longer prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. That’s a pretty lamentable state of affairs in a democracy. What’s worse is that this is a state of affairs that has been brought about, not by fake news from the Kremlin, but by the lies and deceit of successive British governments themselves.

Supporters of the British state can scream all they like about fake news. About Russian manipulation of the news, about it being treacherous to question our government's credentials, but that’s not going to rebuild trust in a British government which has repeatedly lied and has been dishonest without any help from Vladimir Putin. The only people who can rebuild trust in the British government are the representatives of the British government, but that British government doesn’t seem inclined to change its ways. There is no willingness to learn from the mistakes of the past, and Westminster keeps on repeating them. Being British seems to mean being caught in a groundhog day of war. All this has happened before, and it will keep on happening.

One problem is that there is no accountability built into the structures of the British state. The Prime Minister can do what he or she pleases as long as they have the support of a neutered parliament of lobby fodder. There are no checks and balances, no written rules. The famously unwritten British constitution really just gives the power of the day carte blanche to do as it pleases. Sometimes a country really does need to go to war, but Britain has created a situation where even if that were the case many people would oppose it because successive British governments have lied about the need for military action so often in the past. Sadly and regrettably, there are times when military action is indeed justified, but British governments have created a situation in which the public can no longer be confident if that action is justified or not.

We really do need to change important aspects of our governance. We need to get away from a state which treats warfare as a short term political tactic. We need a government which can be held to account. We need change because we need a government which is representative of the views and the will of the people. We need change because politicians cannot be trusted, and we need to keep them close to us so that their arses are within kicking distance of our feet.  Then when our politicians do take us into war we can be confident that they’re doing so in the national interest, and not in their own.

And in the meantime, Assad continues unabashed.