15 April 2018
The British opposition leader said his country needs the war powers act to limit government’s control over military interventions.
After questioning the joint U.S., U.K. and French airstrikes against Syrian government structures, British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said he will push for a “war powers act” that would require the British government to seek approval from parliament for any future military actions.
In an interview with the BBC Sunday, Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, reiterated his argument that the U.K. strikes lacked legal basis and an authorization from the United Nations.
“The legal basis would have to be self-defence, or the authority of the UN security council. Humanitarian intervention is a legally debatable concept at the present time,” Corbyn said.
“I think parliament should have a say in this, and the prime minister could quite easily have done that … What we need in this country is something more robust, like a war powers act, so that governments do get held to account by parliament for what they do in our name.”
