Prerogative of War (II)

Hmm .... - reading The [London] Times, I may have been a bit quick off the mark with the Lords' Constitution Committee. Apparently all that they are suggesting is a constitutional convention about Parliamentary approval for wars &c.

In a sense, this would just be a crystallization of the current position - essentially the Earl of Onslow's point in the radio exchange I noted previously. On the one hand, this is therefore a lot less wrongheaded (IMHO) than the Left's idea of legal rules. On the other - so what are you going to achieve ?

It seems to me that there are two problems of constitutional principle here:

1. You can't conjure a convention into existence like this. If people do it because of the words then it isn't a convention - see the so-called 'Sewel Convention' re Scots devolution. If enough people to matter really think that the Government needs advance clearance for wars etc (would that include 'peacekeeping' in Lebanon ?), then they will make it so. 'Sewel' will only truly become a convention after it has survived substantial political differences between London and Edinburgh, where Westminster has not intervened not because it was inconvenient but because they were aware that it was thought to be wrong. That is the essence of conventions.
   
2. This possibly substantial constitutional change (I suspect that it's meant to be a precursor - otherwise why bother ?) is being piggybacked on popular discontent about Iraq. This is wrong. The former is a question of consti, the latter is a question of politics, and as Their Lordships know perfectly well a prior parliamentary vote would have made no difference - military action in Iraq would have been approved, as of course it was.
   

One really would have thought that people might have learnt from the debacle over the (non-)abolition of the post of Lord Chancellor. Do consti things for consti reasons - anything else is asking for trouble.