MPs are to debate and vote on a government motion to extend UK airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on Wednesday. David Cameron will almost certainly get enough votes as about 60 Labour MPs – in a free vote agreed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – are expected to vote with the government. The vote comes two years after parliament rejected a motion for the UK to take military action against Bashar al-Assad after a suspected chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of the capital Damascus. Here are where British papers stand on the eve of the vote.
For
The Daily Telegraph favours military action but has many reservations.
When the vote comes, a majority for action would be sensible and in line with public opinion, but Mr Cameron should take nothing for granted here. Many who will support him will do so with very reasonable concerns about what happens next. How will the ground forces needed to defeat Isil be constituted and directed? What will become of the Assad regime? What can be done to prevent the monstrous ideology that drives Isil erupting in some other place after Syria? Mr Cameron has been assiduous in trying to answer such questions, but he can still do more. He should also be realistic about what British military force can accomplish; despite plans for welcome increases in defence spending, RAF capability in the region is limited.
The UN security council has called on member states to take all necessary measures to “eradicate the safe haven [Isis] have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria”. This gives a strong legal grounding to what is primarily a political and moral case for action. After the Paris attacks, Britain has a duty to demonstrate that it is in lock step with its neighbour. As Mr Cameron has said, if the UK does not stand with France at this moment, its allies could be forgiven for asking: “If not now, when?”
For all western governments, Syria presents an exceptionally difficult diplomatic and military problem. That should not stop the UK, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, from playing the fullest possible role in seeking to resolve it. This will not happen if Britain stays on the sidelines of the anti-Isis campaign in Syria.
The Independent says British airstrikes are useful but only if accompanied by strong diplomacy.
The case for Britain sending RAF fighters into the skies above Raqqa has merit – so long as the drawbacks are acknowledged, and the relative military insignificance of such a move is understood... But Isis will not be defeated by air strikes, and Britain should not fool itself that it is possible to do so. The deployment of the RAF is useful – but only in so far as it lays the ground for more muscular diplomacy.
The Daily Express hammers Corbyn while coming out in favour of hitting Isis in Syria.
We know that the terrorist tribe laying waste to Iraq and Syria, and whose tentacles have spread bloodshed around the world, are experts at the internet and social media. If they are following Calamity Corbyn’s antics on the news websites they must be chuckling in their desert foxholes. It is high time to wipe the smiles off their faces - and for Labour’s leader to grow up.
The Sunday Times argues that it is absurd for British warplanes to target Isis in Iraq but not Syria. (paywall)
The situation in Syria is complex but the case for airstrikes is straightforward. It is an absurdity that Britain is allowed to target Isis in Iraq, but not across the border in its Syrian heartlands. And it would be wrong not to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies — and against those who would still seek to kill us whether or not we remain on the sidelines.
Against
The UK government does not have to pretend any of these questions are easy. They are not. But it needs to offer more than an RAF wing and a prayer. If Mr Cameron had come to parliament with a wide-ranging international strategy for defeating Isis on every front – cultural and financial, through both the intelligence agencies and the military – we would have been open to that. We could be open to it still. But so far he has failed that test. Admittedly, the bar is higher now, the public more sceptical after Iraq than before. But as things stand, we believe MPs should say no.
We would urge Britain to join Barack Obama and François Hollande if they were proposing a mass, UK-Franco-American army of occupation. This would include, imperatively, Arab states in the region and, more vitally, a ten-year plan for establishing a UN protectorate. But if these less-than-impressive leaders, or Mr Cameron himself, have any coherent strategy for what happens after the bombers go in, we have yet to hear it. So, yes, it sickens the Mail to find ourselves in the same camp as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, who pose as peace-lovers while nursing a soft spot for terrorists. Even more, it distresses us to know that many of our readers, for whom we have enormous respect, may disagree with us. But on balance, and with many misgivings, this paper believes the case for bombing Syria has not yet been made.
The Observer argues that the struggle against Isis is essentially one of ideas rather than bombs.
If Isis is destroyed but not discredited, debunked and exposed for the evil sham it is, other, possibly ever more extreme Islamist groups will likely take its place. As we said Britain is already at war. It is already assisting its French and American allies militarily. But at bottom, it is a war of values and ideas, not of more and more bombs. This is the fight we must win, however long it takes. Mr Cameron has failed to make the case for expanded military action in Syria. His proposal should not be supported.
The Daily Mirror criticises what it calls a rush to vote and is not convinced that Cameron has persuaded the majority of the British public. (In today’s paper but not on its site)
Mr Cameron is wrong to rush to a vote tomorrow after a single day’s discussion instead of pausing for the detailed two-day debate demanded by labour leaser Jeremy Corbyn and backed by the SNP and anti-war Conservatives... Yet the fact is, as things sand, the Prime Minister will soon secure Parliamentary approval to bomb Islamic State in Syria, and Britain will soon be in another war.”
