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.

May's Brexit: An unnecessary conflict between Executive and Parliamentary authority in Britain

At every turn, Theresa May has antagonised Parliament and picked fights unnecessary fights.

Today Theresa May has her authority in the Commons put to the test. So far as Prime Minister she has drawn some very stark lines, creating some poorly considered battles and today's vote seems amongst the least necessary.

The PM made her Brexit Bill intentions pretty clear. She wanted a simple bill, passed quickly. No flourishes, just a straight forward rubber stamping from Parliament to authorise her to trigger the UK's biggest constitutional change in lifetimes.

Considering how May ignored and excluded Parliament rather than engaging from the beginning, the rubber stamp should never have seemed likely to come easily. In fact her determination to keep this to executive authority alone has been almost obsessive.

From the beginning, May has tried to portray the referendum as giving her a personal mandate to wield reserve powers - despite the referendum never being a legally binding vote, whether or not you accept its result as a guide for future policy. That is particularly astounding When you consider that May is trying to change the constitution by executive power alone.

When this position, of cutting Parliament out of the process, was challenged, May's Government went to court - ostensibly to legally exclude Parliament. When the judges faced harassment and media attacks, the response from May's Cabinet - which should have been standing up for judicial independence - was at first absent and then poor.

Then, the Lords sought, in the form of amendments to the court-ordered Brexit Bill, to guarantee the UK's commitment to protecting EU citizens currently resident in the UK and to ensure that the Commons plays a definite role in ratifying any Brexit deal. The PM's response was almost ludicrous.

First she took to the press to virtually order the Lords to comply with her narrow aims on the bill. May then took the unusual and aggressive step of making herself personally present in the Lords to watch over the debate.

To do so, she sat on the steps of throne, a privilege afforded to her as a member of the Privy Council - the Queen's council of advisors. That knowledge expresses a lot about the nature of the dispute over how Brexit is proceeding: the Prime Minister turning to executive authority and reserve powers and privileges to bully and exclude Parliament.

The most obvious question is: why? Why bother? In her quest to treat the referendum as a personal mandate, May seems determined to undermine every other branch of government. She is picking fights in every direction.

Look at her initial approach to negotiating with the EU. She ignored the EU's position - that negotiations would only start when Article 50 was officially triggered and that the EU member states would negotiate collectively - and set off to try and negotiate with each member directly.

Theresa May seems determined to antagonise everyone and everything around her, drawing lines and making fights out of what should be collaborations. And that speaks volumes about the way the Conservatives are governing Britain.

Cameron Premiership in Review: In the end, there was no one left to hide behind

After six years as Prime Minister, David Cameron leaves office having lost the EU referendum argument not just in the country but within his own party. Photograph: Prime Minister David Cameron - official photograph by Number 10 (License) (Cropped)

David Cameron came into office at the head of Britain's first coalition government since the wartime National Government. The message, as he stood in the Rose Garden to begin his double act with Nick Clegg, was a promise of a different form of government (BBC, 2010). More open. Less overbearing.

Yet the laughs and relaxed atmosphere of the Rose Garden came to stand for other things over the course of Cameron's six years in office: a tendency to let others take the hits and an appearance of detachment from the painful realities of the recession and austerity programme that followed.

Cameron certainly rebuilt the Conservative Party as an electoral force and he made a stern effort to try and modernise it, often against much resistance (Hennessy, 2010; Grice, 2014). As PM, he clearly wanted to be remembered as a reformer (Hoskin, 2016).

But that ambition is likely to be overridden by the gap that has opened between Scotland and the rest of the UK - which with another referendum may result in a full division - and of course the EU referendum, that Cameron lost, and will have a long lasting and drastic impact on the future of the UK.

There have been positive reforms. The introduction of gay marriage is a stand out achievement, as Jeremy Corbyn stressed in David Cameron's last appearance at Prime Minister's Questions. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition was itself also a landmark moment for UK politics that until that point had been majoritarian and adversarial to a fault.

And yet even as the PM told the public that 'we're all in this together', part of a big society that government would support rather than direct from the centre, the twin impact of recession and austerity saw poverty deepen. The spread of food banks to help the homeless or those unable to afford food (Williams, 2015), the rise of welfare sanctions (Ashmore, 2015), and the continued rise in the cost of housing have made that promise seem hollow.

That attitude has been reinforced by policies like corporation tax being regularly slashed even as the welfare bill has been squeezed. It was also reinforced by his approach: 'flashman' as he was nicknamed, quick to dish out the put downs and ad hominem insults that made him appear arrogant and dismissive.

Cameron's time as PM was not short of scandals, from the appointment of Andy Coulson to his family being caught up in the Panama Papers revelations. But nothing ever seemed to stick to the now former Conservative leader. Not even NHS doctor's going out on dramatic strikes.

That is perhaps most starkly demonstrated by the way in which the Tories where the ones who benefited at the polls from all of the positives of the Coalition while their Liberal Democrat partners where electorally crushed, seemingly with blame for all of the negatives.

And there were always excuses. The previous Labour government received the main brunt of the Prime Minister's criticism, with economic problems usually prefaced with the work Conservatives were doing to make up for the 'mess' that Labour left (Watt, 2010).

Ultimately, Cameron's premiership comes to an end because he picked a fight on the EU referendum that he couldn't win and it is perhaps significant that it was a fight with the right-wing of his own party. As PM, Cameron's biggest challenge has always been wrestling with his own party rather than fending off the leaders of the other parties.

Even with the pain of austerity, the opposition has always been so divided that it is almost unsurprising that Cameron, with the help of his own party, had to be the orchestrator of his own downfall. Progressives will not to be too sad to see the end of his tenure. But the future after Cameron is uncertain.

Trying to moderate his party's position, Cameron rebuilt them as a political force. Without him at the helm, with the opposition divided, a question now hangs over what the new Tory leader will use that platform to pursue next.