“If you’re not confused, then you don’t understand the situation,” said the Conservatives’ Sir Alan Duncan, the House of Commons’ resident Confucius. It was marginally less patronising than “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps,” though only just. By Duncan’s benchmark, there were a large number of idiots savants in the chamber for the day-long debate on bombing Syria: not least among them the prime minister, who appeared a great deal more confused about his position than a week ago. Just as well he hadn’t agreed to a two-day debate next week as he could have ended up voting against himself.
After urging his MPs not to side with terrorist sympathisers by voting with the opposition – well, most of it – the previous evening, David Cameron spent most of his opening speech ignoring interruptions calling for him to apologise. Every time he tries to play the world statesman, he manages to spontaneously self-combust. Perhaps Dave should just accept that he and olive branches don’t see eye to eye.
The failed apology seemed to bother the prime minister a great deal more than it did his opponents as he went on to admit he didn’t really have an exit strategy for military action, he didn’t have a clue if there were really 70,000 moderate Syrian ground troops to capitalise on air strikes and he didn’t quite know what a couple of Tornados could bring to the party.
All he did know for sure was our Brimstone missiles were programmed to target only people carrying Isis passports and doing something was better than doing nothing. To show he meant business, he went on to say that from now on he would be referring to Isis as Daesh. No greater disrespect hath any man than that. It was one of the least convincing cases for war a prime minister can ever have made.
At least Dave could console himself that the confusion was contagious: Jeremy Corbyn appeared nervous and hesitant as he began to make the case for not going to war. Sitting between Tom Watson and Hilary Benn, both of whom planned to vote with the government, can’t have helped. Neither can the infighting in the Labour party over the past week. Forget degrading Isis: Labour has successfully degraded itself.
Corbyn did pick up momentum when pointing out that the foreign affairs committee had only the previous day decided that the prime minister had not yet made a satisfactory case for war – an observation that provoked an astonishing outburst from Crispin Blunt, the Conservative chair of said committee, in which he as good as admitted that his committee was completely useless and could be safely ignored. He might regret saying that. Corbyn couldn’t capitalise, though, as he repeatedly refused to make clear whether he supported the ongoing airstrikes in Iraq. He sat down to muted “hear hears” from his own bench.
Though not from several former Labour ministers, who wasted no time in splitting their party in two and siding with the government. Margaret Beckett argued it would be wrong not to rally to the call of the French, seemingly unbothered that the French had seldom knowingly rallied to ours in recent years. Alan Johnson was up for a fight with his own party as much as the Syrians by finger-jabbing those who had tried to finger-jab him for supporting the war. Yvette Cooper had her own peculiar compromise. “How about just bombing Syria for six months and see how much we like it?” she suggested. Brilliant. A special offer on bombing campaigns. Next she’ll come up with a “buy one bombing campaign, get one free”. Watch out, Egypt.
Despite the unexpected support of the Liberal Democrats – Stockholm syndrome must have left them with a soft spot for the Conservatives – the prime minister didn’t get everything his own way, as there were plenty of war refuseniks to be found on his own side. Not least Julian Lewis, chair of the defence select committee, who referred to the imaginary 70,000 as “bogus battalions” and the equivalent of Blair’s “Dodgy Dossier”. Dave flushed at that.
There’s nothing like a good – or bad – war to fill the house and there’s nothing like a good war to bring out the self-importance and hand-wringing self-pity of some of its members. Particularly those making the case for war.
“This is going to hurt me far more than it’s going to hurt them,” was a familiar theme among the more angst-ridden. As was: “Some of my best friends are Syrians.” Both will be a huge comfort to the civilians of Raqqa in the coming months. Others, such as Sir Gerald Howarth, reconciled their consciences by suggesting we wouldn’t actually be going to war as all we were doing was extending operations. That will also be a huge comfort to the civilians of Raqqa.
On and on the talking went, but the debate was over. Almost every mind had been made up before it had even started. War it is.
