IN April 2013, David Cameron recalled Parliament so that MPs and peers could pay tribute to Margaret Thatcher.
This year he waited the best part of a month before telling MPs that the UK had entered the war in Syria.
The use of Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations to protect ourselves from imminent attack may have made the strike on August 21 in which two Daesh fighters were killed legal.
But make no mistake: Britain has entered the war.
This may be the only action we take. This may be the beginning of more, but we – and rest assured it is we and not them or the UK – are at war.
Just last Friday, even though he surely would have known about August’s attacks, Cameron said he would “only proceed” with airstrikes “if there is genuine consensus in the UK about it before going back to Parliament”.
And had either Cardiff-born Reyaad Khan or Aberdeen’s Ruhul Amin managed to carry out these “brutal” attacks on Britain, he and the intelligence services would have had to answer difficult questions.
But there are also politics at play here. Harriet Harman, already declared as being sympathetic to the idea of military intervention, was briefed on the strikes yesterday morning.
Angus Robertson and the SNP only found out about the strikes in the chamber. That is about avoiding scrutiny.
In the run-up to the Iraq war during the Blair years, Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrats were frequently kept up to date on the situation on the ground, despite being critical of the Labour government’s position.
It cannot have escaped Cameron’s attention that the announcement of the airstrikes would overshadow the news that the UK will take in a paltry 4,000 refugees this year.
If there is one lesson we can already learn from the seemingly never-to-be-published Chilcot Report, it is that there must be transparency.
Cameron says he will not publish the government’s legal advice. That is, he will not publish the legal advice that gave him permission to end the life of a British citizen.
He should publish and provide us with the evidence. If there is military action and killing being done in our name then we deserve that, at least.
Outrage as David Cameron admits approving RAF air strike that killed British jihadists in Syria
Michael Gray: If there is a hell, it is overflowing with arms traders ... let's end UK complicity
Letters to The National, September 8: The images from Syria we do not see, or chose not to
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