Theresa May was hardly thinking of the 'will of the people' when it came to military intervention

Asked if she lost sleep before deciding to join the US and France in bombing Syria, Theresa May couldn’t answer even this apparently simple question.

Like a GCSE super-swot parroting a doggedly memorised answer, she trotted out the platitude about sending troops into action being the hardest thing a prime minister has to do. But whether she slept well on the eve of what can hardly be dignified as battle, or was too anxious to get more than a few winks, she wouldn’t say.

Perhaps she thought she’d sound glib if she gave the first answer, and weak if she gave the second. The lethal flaw that did so enliven her election campaign still plagues her: what we’ve still got here, it seems, is failure to communicate.

If she loses sleep tonight, here’s hoping it is because she is putting some serious thought into an incredibly complex matter – tomorrow’s speech to the Commons.

Judging by yesterday’s tour de force of inarticulacy (matching the idiosyncratic style of Boris Johnson), in which she substituted cliché for argument and blethering for logic, she really needs to chug down the Pro Plus and do an all-nighter. She has various questions to address, none as facile as the insomnia one, and all of which she can be relied on to ignore.

One question is domestic, and grindingly obvious. If the paramount point of Brexit is restoring parliamentary supremacy, why did she not consult parliament before sending war planes into Syrian airspace?

Even now, she has no plans for a debate. “As I say, the PM will be making a full statement tomorrow,” said Boris when Andrew Marr asked him about that earlier today.

She has no more of a constitutional duty to call a debate than to sanction military action. This is because in place of a constitution, we have the incompressible jumble of protocols, conventions and precedents which allow a premier to do as she or he pleases.

Even so, the precedent set by David Cameron, when last a government contemplated punishing Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons, is to let MPs decide.

If May prefers to rely on the wisdom of President Trump, that’s her call. But she might explain what was so frantically urgent about these raids that she was willing to ridicule the most sacred of all Brexit precepts.

She surely could have persuaded Trump to wait a day, and recalled the Commons on Saturday. It would have inconvenienced some MPs by interrupting their holidays, and our hearts would have bled for each and every one of them. But what’s the point of parliamentary sovereignty if not to help a PM with the hardest decision she could ever take?

Other questions are geopolitical. Was this mission aimed more at deterring Assad, or as a shot across Vladimir Putin’s bows? If the former, will she mutely accept Assad’s coming victory in the civil war so long as he sticks to more gentlemanly ways of murdering his people?

If the latter, how far will she go, as junior partner to the stable genius in the White House, to counter Putin should he continue testing the limits of Western endurance?

Trump’s response so far has been surprisingly restrained, and thank the Lord for that. But with the certifiably belligerent John Bolton newly installed as his national security adviser, and the temptation for diversionary pyrotechnics intensifying as Robert Mueller’s investigation spreads beyond Russian collusion, would you bank on the president’s patience holding?

It was touch and go last week whether his saner advisers would hold him in check. If this proves to be mission unaccomplished, and something similar happens again, next time Trump might listen to Bolton rather than Generals Mattis and Kelly, his secretary of defence and chief of staff respectively, and respond quicker and more aggressively. In that event, will May unilaterally lead us into a proxy war with Russia, or might she deign to consult the Commons?

Another question is more personal. We are told that what steeled May to sanction the raids was the footage of afflicted children. No one who has seen the pictures could be unaffected. But if the suffering of Syrian children has driven her to action now, why 14 months ago did she turn away almost 3,000 Syrian children, even though local authorities had made provision for them in accord with the Dubs amendment for which the Commons voted?

For less than the price of a single missile, with the surcharge of offending the delicate feelings of a few newspapers, those desperate children could have been given homes here.

Will she revisit that cruelty now? Or must more Syrian children gasp for breath through a chlorine-ulcerated mouth before the PM rouses herself, to quote Boris from earlier today, “to stand up for principle and civilised values”?

If she didn’t lose sleep after turning those children away last February, it’s a safe bet she lost none on Friday night. But without wanting to give the makeup artist too big a challenge with her under-eye bags, it would be reassuring if she sacrificed a few hours’ kip tonight to write a speech that went beyond the ritual medley of platitudes. Let’s hope that she will engage with the moral, political, military and strategic complexities of intervening yet again in a region with a less than perfect track record for rewarding Western intervention.

Parliament at least deserves that. So we do all.