While Labour continues its struggle to find a party line or allow a free vote, the Conservative party are expected to be hitting the phones this weekend to make sure they can count on all of their 330 MPs to back strikes.
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With Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn opposed to military action, the mood was uncertain.
However, senior shadow cabinet members have been seeking to defuse an internal party row over the issue, which threatens to split Labour. You have a mandate to reform the country. “You’ve got to decide whether you support Cameron’s measures or not”.
He endorsed the idea of giving Labour MPs a free vote and recalled that it was a “horrendous mistake” that MPs were “whipped and threatened and pushed” into supporting “something many of them did not believe in” during the vote on the Iraq war.
The party confirmed that Mr Corbyn’s aide Andrew Fisher had had his supension from the Labour party lifted by the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).
Western leaders privately express some confidence that a tangible worldwide process now under way could exert real pressure on Syrians from all sides to end a four-and-a-half-year-old conflict that has left hundreds of thousands dead and sparked a huge refugee exodus.
Extending military action into Syria will make the United Kingdom safer, the prime minister said.
LONDON – British Prime Minister David Cameron tried to persuade reluctant lawmakers to back airstrikes on the Islamic State group in Syria, saying Thursday that the Paris attacks have given the fight new urgency and Britain owes it to key allies to act.
Cameron’s previous government suffered a humiliating defeat in 2013 over military action against the government forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and did not push joining air strikes in Syria to a vote a year ago, amid resistance from Labour.
Some MPs are also furious at an email sent from a Parliamentary email address by leftwinger Simeon Andrews, lobbying them to oppose any bid to authorise military action.
“It is and we should do it”, Mr Cameron said before leaving Malta to attend an emergency European Union summit in Brussels on Europe’s migration crisis.
The IoS understands he could appeal to MPs directly to vote against action even if the Shadow Cabinet votes in favour.
She said: “Jeremy appoints the shadow cabinet – not the other way round”.
Critics within Labour claimed that Corbyn was trying to use the grassroots powerbase, which elected him as leader, to try to “bounce” the shadow Cabinet into opposing air strikes.
Following the savage attack on Paris, French President Francois Hollande has travelled widely, and with some success, in an effort to forge agreement among world leaders on how to “destroy” Isil.
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“And Jeremy Corbyn is keeping the promises he made to the electorate”. Mr Livingstone, who is co-chairing Labour’s review of its defence policy, told BBC Question Time that the exprime minister’s decision to join the Iraq war had “killed 52 Londoners”. I go further and say of there’s a need for ground troops we should supply them. “The person who frankly seems to be letting himself down is Ken Livingstone with [those] remarks”.
