Restoring sovereignty: Syria executive decision shows that restoring powers, a core Brexit promise, is less about Brussels than Cabinet government at Westminster

The central promise of Brexit was that it would restore the UK's sovereignty. That political process in Britain would be 'reclaimed', for the people. Yet the central organ of political sovereignty, Parliament, continues to be sidelined.

The executive decision by the Prime Minister to order the Syria strikes, without Parliamentary approval, shows we're still a long way from restoring Parliamentary Sovereignty. At Westminster, the centralisation of power is still the rule.

For years politicians of all stripes in Britain spun the illusion that Westminster was shackled. Europe, largely without a voice in the British political media, took the blame for the intractability of Westminster.

Saying goodbye to Brussels means it can no longer be used as an excuse. Politicians will need to either find a new scapegoat, or finally get on with much needed reform - like turning back the tide of centralisation, that has concentrated power and money in Britain a long, long way from the hands of the people.

Reluctance to reform remains. The Conservatives in government under Theresa May would rather use contemptible words like 'betray' about their opposition - officially titled, it should be noted, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition - and accuse them of 'doing down Britain' when they dare to criticise the government.

Brussels may be swapped out for a different scapegoat - whether it's Brexiters calling opponents 'enemies of the people' and 'undemocratic', or the Labour right-wing painting Corbyn, Momentum and the Left in much the same light - but the result is the same. The people are told: there is no alternative.

This is the theme behind all of the scapegoating. The centralising, globalising, marketising, status quo must continue. There is no alternative. In Europe or out, Westminster won't brook the fragmentation of the political power that keeps us on that path. It can't be considered, because the status quo might also fragment.

The decision to take military action without a Parliamentary debate is a whole matter unto itself. Two previous debates on bombing in Syria were split. Action against Assad was rejected in 2013, but action against Daesh was passed in 2015 - though not without criticism from the Foreign Affairs committee over the evidence base.

This time, the process was ignored - perhaps because it could not be counted on to give the 'right' answer. The dangers inherent to the choice to avoid a debate are real enough for the Syria issue alone - there is a clear consensus that military interventions come with substantial risk of creating ungoverned spaces that open the door organised criminals and terrorists.

But there is an underlying point of deep importance for Britain and the idea of Parliamentary Sovereignty. Executive power was used and Parliament was left out of a critical decision - and with it, so too was democratic oversight. Again.

It is easy, and perhaps tempting for some, to pin this all on Theresa May. She has pursued a path in power of taking advantage of every executive privilege, every obscure power. She avoids oversight. Denies transparency, at every turn.

But Theresa May is a Prime Minister inheriting a system and exploiting it, working in a narrow political moment. The problem is bigger than her and is the legacy of her predecessors, with no distinction for parties and historical circumstances.

It does not bode well that Parliament again finds itself frozen out of a critical debate. The wielding of unchecked executive power is not the restoration of sovereignty. It is that from which sovereignty must be restored.

Government, Parliament and the Centralisation of Power: If stability is what you want, you must resist the Government's attempts to strip power from Parliament

Parliament is back in session this week and the neverending turmoil inside the Conservative Party continues. In doing so, it exposes one of the primary weaknesses of a presidential system - and one of the reasons why the UK doesn't have one.

Or rather, why the UK doesn't have a presidential system in theory, at least. During the Tory conference, Theresa May's disastrous speech contained an apology for running too presidential an election campaign. But the grounds for such a campaign have been long in the preparing and only exposes the dramatic shift towards the centralising of decision-making at westminster.

This is a trend stretching back decades and is one of those trends for which New Labour were particularly criticised for not reversing. Even while some powers have been devolved, the Cabinet has continued to accumulate power at the expense of Parliament.

Theresa May's Government has threatened the most drastic veer into excluding Parliament in recent times, with parts of the Brexit Bill. The bill sparked controversy for potentially allowing the Government, embodied in the Cabinet, to make major changes to the law - even to the constitution - without first submitting them to Parliament for scrutiny and vote.

There defense amounted to 'we'll be responsible with that power', but that isn't enough. This is just the latest step in a long term trend. Parliament has been getting weaker for decades and with it has come a, perhaps unintended, consequence: instability.

In the strictest terms, the constitutional and governmental powers of the United Kingdom are vested in Parliament. It is the supreme authority in state. Collectively, the power of the state is embodied by - primarily - the Members of Parliament in the House of Commons.

Theresa May promised a state that was strong and stable centred on her personal rule. So did David Cameron. And neither on them has been able to deliver. In the late twentieth century and the early part of the new millenium, there were brief periods when the winds were just right, or the two party system rigid and exclusive enough, that singular leaders could stick around for a while.

But betting on stability rooted in the personal longevity of a single person would get you long odds and for good reason. Power embodied in a single person or a single party is inherently unstable, because their power base is fundamentally just a fraction of the people of a country.

That the power of state is, in theory, vested in Parliament is above all a reflection of the futility minority rule. Theresa May can never offer stability if power is not rooted in inclusive, democratic assemblies.

As her speech showed, power hangs on a thread. A persistent cough can weaken the power of one person. And if that person must embody the state and all it's people and power, you start down a dark road that leads nowhere good.

When the Brexit Bill returns, MPs - especially Tories - must be brave enough to resist to flagrant concentration of power. If for nothing else, to put an end to a trend that has guaranteed a near permanent condition of instability that affects everyone.

Contests & Mergers: Is talk of a Labour-Tory merger just an effort to force party members to accept status quo candidates?

Manifesto tag lines from the Labour and Conservative parties at 2015 general election.

With two leadership elections under way for Britain's two biggest political parties, David Cameron's call for a new captain to steer the ship seems to have cast the country adrift. In such messy times, its not unusual to hear odd or interesting ideas for how to get back on course.

But in British politics it is certainly far from usual to hear talk of Conservative and Labour MPs possibly being willing to put aside their tribalism and merged with each other. The proposal seems to be that the so-called moderate members of each party will withdraw and together form a new Centre party should the more extreme nominee for each party's leadership emerge the victor.

Against the background of that threat, the memberships of both parties are being pressured to put aside their extreme candidates to maintain the status quo. For the Conservatives that meant pressure to reject Andrea Leadsom in favour of Theresa May, and for Labour the pressure is to back Angela Eagle's challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.

Tory Leadership

On the Conservative side, Brexit was the big divide between the nominees. Of the two, Andrea Leadsom was clearly the outsider, the challenger to Theresa May (Kuenssberg, 2016) - who is very much the candidate representing the present Cameroonian direction. May is also most clearly the one likely to be able to continue without a new election, by representing continuity with the manifesto and policies of the Cameron Ministry.

Leadsom garnered some attention during the referendum campaign as she stood alongside Boris Johnson and Gisella Stuart on the stage for the ITV and BBC debates, arguing for Britain to exit the European Union. So much so that, with Boris Johnson's withdrawal, she was easily able to beat the other Brexit nominees - including Michael Gove, who seems to have only hurt himself with his cloak & dagger antics.

In contrast, May remained largely aloof from the EU referendum campaign. However she nonetheless courted controversy when, despite offering some support for Cameron's pro-EU stance, she suggested that the British commitment to the European Convention of Human Rights should be dropped as an inconvenience (Asthana & Mason, 2016) - a stance many have felt is consistent with her hardline positions as Home Secretary.

As Home Secretary, May has been criticised for her stances on a number of contentious issues. From her handling of the subject of Islamist extremism in schools (Adams, 2014), to her continued efforts to push through the Snooper's Charter (Mason, Asthana & Travis, 2016), and of course for her stance on the ECHR, she has been criticised by progressives. She also, and of particular relevance to conservative voters, faced criticism for her management of the border agency when it was found not to conducting proper checks (BBC, 2011).

For her part, Leadsom managed to attract most of the controversy to herself in the course of the contest. She made some ill-judged and troubling comments, from allegedly criticising Theresa May for not being a mother (Pearson, 2016) to saying she opposed equal marriage because it was 'damaging' to Christians (Cowburn, 2016). In fact, the controversies have generated so much heat that this morning Leadsom in fact withdrew from contention - much as Chuka Umunna did from the Labour contest back in 2015.

That left Theresa May to take up the Conservative leadership unopposed. While May is likely to pick up threads from Cameron's ministry, there will likely also be a turn even deeper into social conservatism that will worry progressives.

Labour Leadership

Across the floor, the intrigue that has racked the Labour Party since the referendum has moved on to a new chapter with the breakdown of talks between Deputy Leader Tom Watson, representing the Parliamentary Labour Party, and party Leader Jeremy Corbyn - which were being mediated by trade union leader Len McCluskey (The Guardian, 2016).

This seemingly final inability to close the breach has led to Angela Eagle finally announcing her long touted challenge (BBC, 2016). Pitching herself as a practical socialist, using the long favoured New Labour line that its fine to have principles but you also need to speak to a broad audience, Eagle will stand ostensibly against Corbyn in what has all the making of being the memberships' candidate versus the PLP's candidate.

Complications and potential legal challenges aside, over whether or not Corbyn will be allowed on the ballot without nominations from MPs - his opponents seem very keen to block him - such a contest does not seem to be something likely to unify the already shattered party. Of course on the one hand,  as a gay woman it would certainly be a welcome step forward in representation for the Left to have Eagle in Labour's most senior political position at Westminster.

However, her policy stances have been deeply in line with those of New Labour: she supported the Iraq War and was against an investigation; she supported New Labour's authoritarian domestic policies, like ID cards, 90 day no-charge detentions and stricter terms for asylum; and she also abstained on the Welfare Bill that sought to cut tax credits (Sinclair, 2016).

Corbyn's election was as much, if not more, a rejection of New Labour - its methods, its language and its hybrid of social democracy and neoliberalism - as it was an endorsement of the Labour Left's brand of democratic socialism. If both face the membership, it seems hard to see Eagle winning over Corbyn's supporters, or reconciling them with the mainstream if she wins.

Is a Labour-Tory merger really possible?

In the shadows behind the leadership contests - whether simply a way to galvanise their respective partisan supporters into stopping their extreme wings from taking hold, or as a genuine possibility - a merger of the mainstream of the Conservative and Labour parties has been proposed (Boffey & Helm, 2016).

Historically, such a merger would seem to be impossible. For nearly a century Labour and the Conservatives have been locked in a polemic struggle, government versus opposition - two opposite, though undeniably converging, forces that have defined the British political landscape and formed the basic reference points for any discussion of politics.

However, it wouldn't be entirely without historical precedent. After former Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald was expelled by the party, his new National Labour worked closely with the Tories until being fundamentally consumed by them. During war time, the two parties also showed they were able to work alongside one another amicably.

The referendum has also changed things, even if only temporarily. At no time in recent memory have the mainstream of the two main parties been so closely aligned, with good will so clear between them. May's unopposed run to the Conservative leadership will probably scupper any plans before they could get off the ground, but Labour's crisis makes some sort of realignment seem inevitable.

When a progressive alliance looks closer to being assembled than it ever has, a plan to bring together the so-called centre would be a big setback. If an effort to bring the 'Centrists' together in one large party of Democrats was successful, it would surely suck in Liberal Democrats too. That would leave the UK with a single major political party that is successor to the only three that have governed in more than a century.

The formation of such a party, one massive, pro-establishment, state party would be pretty much the opposite of the pluralism that Britain sorely needs. After the chaos of the referendum, the Conservatives seem to be steadying their ship while the Left remains caught in a storm and likely to run aground.

The next move appears to be in the hands of Labour MPs. The choice ahead of them seems to be between a pluralist progressive alliance, even more pro-establishment centralisation and attempting to simply prop up the shattered husk of the Labour Party - a path favoured by at least one former leader (Aitkenhead, 2016). It would be a brave person who bets on what will happen next.