The prime minister is seeking the formal approval of the cabinet for airstrikes against Isis targets in Syria ahead of a 10-hour debate in the Commons on Wednesday, in which the government is almost certain to win a majority for military action.
Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to allow Labour MPs to have a free vote on whether to bomb targets in Syria will hand David Cameron a “guaranteed majority” in parliament, the former shadow home secretary David Davis has said.
The cabinet will be asked to agree to the scrapping of the weekly session of prime minister’s questions to allow the prime minister to open the debate at midday with the vote scheduled to take place at 10pm.
Corbyn will set out his opposition to the bombings when he replies to the prime minister. But Labour divisions will be highlighted when Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, who supports the bombing, winds up for Labour at about 9.30pm. Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, is expected to conclude for the government.
Davis, who will be among a small number of Conservative MPs to vote with Corbyn in opposing airstrikes, said the Labour leader’s decision to allow his MPs to have a free vote has guaranteed the prime minister victory.
The former shadow home secretary told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4: “The thing that has triggered this has been Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to have a free vote on this, Labour party disunity. However you want to put it, that’s what’s given David Cameron a guaranteed majority. He [Corbyn] is new politics in at least one sense: he is giving everybody the right to [have a] say. Frankly, to be honest, this is a matter of life and death. You can’t whip an issue like this.”
The Tory whips are confident that they have substantially reduced the number of Tory rebels who voted against airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad in August 2013 to well below 20.
The Tory rebels are likely to be strongly outweighed by as many as 60 Labour MPs who are prepared to vote in favour of airstrikes.
But Clive Lewis, a shadow frontbencher who is a strong Corbyn supporter, warned that Labour MPs who vote with the government will face reprisals if the airstrikes lead to more terrorist attacks. Lewis told the Today programme: “If there are members of the PLP that want to bomb in Syria and vote with the Tories, then on their heads be it.
“They’ve made that decision, I respect that decision in the sense that they have come to the conclusion they have. But if the war in Syria extends, there is a conflagration, there are more terrorist atrocities and the war extends with no end then obviously we will be looking at who voted for this and when the blame is apportioned step forward.”
Benn confirmed that he would support airstrikes in light of the Isis terror attacks in Paris and the recent UN security council resolution that approved all necessary measures to oppose Isis.
“We have a UN security council resolution,” he said. “The Labour party in government helped to found the UN at the end of the second world war because we want countries coming together to deal with threats to international peace and security. When the UN security council passes unanimously ... a resolution which calls on all member states who are able to to take all necessary measures to deal with the threat from Isil/Daesh I think we should take that very seriously.
“It was one of the requirements that the Labour conference laid upon us. It said we won’t support this action unless certain conditions are met. One of those was that there would be a UN security council resolution, and there is. It is because of the threat to our citizens and to others that I think it is the right thing to do.”
Benn moved to play down Labour divisions as he described Corbyn as a principled leader. “People of principle can reach different decisions about how to deal with the threat,” he said. “People of conscience have reached different views about what the right thing to do is. Those views are sincerely held and we should respect them.
“It is to the great credit of Jeremy as a leader that he has recognised that there is a difference of view on this most important of questions and he has decided we are going to have a free vote.”
The prime minister announced his decision to hold a vote after another day of Labour infighting, which ended with Corbyn forced to abandon plans to enforce a three-line whip against airstrikes, a decision that would have triggered mass resignations of senior frontbenchers. Before the lunchtime shadow cabinet meeting, the Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, convinced Corbyn that threats of mass frontbench resignations were not a bluff and he had to concede a free vote.
In return, Corbyn demanded the shadow cabinet also agree to a statement that party policy was to oppose airstrikes and that this was in line with the motion on Syria agreed in September by the party conference.
But Corbyn’s planned compromise fell apart as it was rejected by shadow cabinet members, who claimed that such a deal both misinterpreted the motion and would leave MPs exposed to activists’ attacks for spurning party policy.
The shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, led the criticism, saying he was not willing to accept a deal that was designed to stoke pressure on MPs.
In an acknowledgement of the scale of doubts on the Labour benches about bombing Syria, Watson wrote to Cameron saying that the prime minister’s assertion that there are “approximately 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters on the ground who do not belong to extremist groups” had been widely challenged.
In his Today programme interview, Davis dismissed the 70,000 figure. He said: “We have no idea of what sort of army we are going to have on the ground [in Syria]. The 70,000 that David Cameron talked about is a bunch of disparate people all over the country. It is not an army and we need armed forces on the ground if we are going to win this.”
