And it came, naturally enough, as particularly sweet music to the ears of Tory MPs, in that it not only highlighted the current savage divisions within the Labour Party, but was delivered by the son of that great standard-bearer of the anti-war British left, the late Tony Benn.
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Neil Findlay MSP, who ran Mr Corbyn’s campaign for the Labour leadership in Scotland, said: “I was very saddened and disappointed by the vote last night”.
MPs, of all people, should be able to make a clear and concise point as to why they believe what they do.
Its former leader, Corbyn refused to say if he still opposes airstrikes in Iraq where they have clearly been vital.
Corbyn and John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, have said there is no room for deselection of MPs and emphasised the inclusive, broad nature of the shadow cabinet.
Momentum, however, strongly denied plotting to de-select MPs who backed air strikes while Mr Watson said the group’s influence had been overstated.
It already has. Four RAF Tornado jets carried out air strikes over Syria in the hours following the vote in the House of Commons, focusing on six targets across an Daesh-controlled oil field in the east of the country, near the Iraq border.
Shadow Defence Minister Kevan Jones has laid into the leader after the vote over air strikes in Syria, which saw 66 Labour MPs reject the leader’s anti-war position vote with the Government.
The party is expected to hold the seat, and a solid majority in the first public vote since becoming Labour leader would bolster Corbyn’s position. Greg Mulholland (Lib Dem, Leeds North West) and Conservative MPs Kris Hopkins (Keighley), Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) and Philip Davies (Shipley) voted with the Government on Wednesday, December 2 following a long Parliamentary debate.
The British Labour Party pushed Corbyn to release them from party discipline.
The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour’s leader in September rocked the party to the core – progressive Blairite politicians were not happy while other MPs became confused on what the party line was.
But he stopped short of issuing the apology his critics sought as the controversy hindered his attempt to unite MPs behind military action. “The selection of candidates is entirely a matter for local party members and rightly so”.
In his speech supporting military action in Syria on Wednesday, Benn colonised language that rightly belongs to his radical political rivals, and, in distorting it, made it meaningless.
He made clear that Mr Corbyn remained determined to re-make the party in his own left-wing image and that of the grass roots activists who propelled him to the leadership.
“I think, due to their behaviour, Labour members who are part of Momentum should resign from Momentum and just stay within the Labour Party”.
The Socialist Party published the wording of a model resolution which they suggested Labour members could use to demand the removal of their constituency MP. “Stop the War will continue to hold to democratic account all those MPs who vote for war”, the group’s chairman, Andrew Murray, and convener, Lindsey German, said.
“I’ve known him since he was an advisor, I wasn’t surprised but it’s great the country has seen what a potentially great leader he would make”.
Labour MP Clive Lewis – an ally of Mr Corbyn and shadow energy and climate change minister – acknowledged it was a “really dark” time for the party.
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“Jeremy Corbyn’s elected representatives are coming under pressure from people who think they are operating in the leader’s name and only the leader and his team can take action to distance themselves from people who are not Labour representatives”. That was what killed us in Scotland as much as anything.
