Parliament is not fit for purpose.

I sincerely hope it doesn't happen, but it is not beyond the realms of imagination that we could see British Tornado pilots in cages being burned alive by ISIS.

That will be a consequence of sending antique aircraft into a contested airspace with lousy threat detection ability on a suicidal attack profile. MP's will be demanding answers as to how this could have happened. It happens because MP's like Hilary Benn would rather use the debates as an opportunity to sing their own virtues to the world rather than scrutinising bad government policy put forward on the basis of wilfully distorted intelligence.

I'm sure it feels mighty good to stand up in the house and preach about fighting "fascism" and "evil". That gets a round of applause. Who wants to listen to some stuffy old bore asking questions about quality of intelligence, military capability, strategic objectives and timescales? Who cares about the morality of barging into someone else's war of self determination that could develop into the front line of a new cold war? Zzzzzzz!!! BORING!!!

Never mind the tough questions of who we are bombing and what with, and what the long term effects and consequences will be, just so long as it feels all warm and fuzzy to side with the PM. After all, dropping bombs in Syria just because the French are is a perfectly viable reason for expanding a war!

Nevermind the details. Let's just give a mandate for the PM and MoD officials to do whatever they like with it. Who cares what we're actually voting for or why?

What I would ask though is if parliament is just Speakers Corner to project sentiment rather than scrutinise, why even bother having a debate at all? We have Farage to do tubthumping fact free speeches. Why even bother with parliament? It no longer does what it is supposed to do.

If ISIS do end up having a Tornado pilot barbecue, all the bovine MPs who couldn't be bothered to do their most basic duty of scrutiny will have to take a bow for that.

Given how degraded parliament is now, that should give some pause for thought for all those Brexiteers who want powers returned to Westminster. As much a Brussels isn't up the the job, our own parliament lacks the intellectual and moral capacity to be trusted with these such decisions. We must have direct democracy on these matters, because this is most certainly not representative democracy.