May’s Britain must react with reason

IAN Blackford is right to demand MPs rubber stamp any new military action in Syria.

The SNP’s Westminster leader recognises there are no risk-free options with which to respond to this humanitarian disaster.

A rush to do something – anything – in response to horrific images of children gassed to death by the evil regime of Bashar al-Assad is understandable.

That’s why it is so important that parliament gets a say in what happens next.

We must act with credibility and after a period of calm and reasoned reflection.

May has no constitutional requirement to seek parliament’s approval and is keen to avoid the embarrassment suffered by David Cameron when MPs blocked his attempts to intervene in Syria in 2013.

We can never know what would have happened if that fateful Westminster vote had went differently.

Barack Obama would almost certainly have followed through on his threat of airstrikes.

But would that have deterred future use of chemical weapons, changed the course of the war or even toppled the Syrian tyrant Assad?

What we do know is that last year Donald Trump carried out exactly the type of airstrikes that Obama pulled back from.

They had no noticeable impact on events in Syria and there is little evidence that fresh wave of airstrikes would be any different.

But a more significant intervention is laden with risks.

It could collapse the Syrian government and prolong the war or even spark the nightmare scenario of a direct confrontation with Russia.

The idea of Britain finding itself in the middle of a nuclear showdown between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is too horrifying to contemplate.

May is a Prime Minister without a majority.

She has no moral authority to involve the UK in this dangerous conflict without consulting parliament.