But, the key to going to a vote was a decision by Labour’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
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Labour’s shadow cabinet agreed on Monday that MPs would be given a free vote despite Corbyn’s public opposition to strikes to avert a threatened rebellion by pro-bombing members such as shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn.
Jeremy Corbyn has warned his MPs there is “no hiding place” from the consequences of their vote on Syrian air strikes, after both sides in Labour’s verbal civil war on the issue continued to trade insults in the media.
Inability to reach consensus in what is understood to have been a fractious two-hour Shadow Cabinet meeting in the Commons meant the party will allow members to vote with their conscience. The weekly prime minister’s question time will be cancelled on Wednesday to allow extra time for debate before a vote is held at around 10 p.m.in London, Bloomberg said.
But he said it was right to go after terrorists “who threaten people in our country just as they attacked and killed those people on the streets of Paris, the streets of Ankara and the streets of Beirut, and indeed British people on the beaches of Tunisia”.
Mr Cameron said: “Obviously when you contemplate any military action – and remember our pilots are flying over Iraq attacking Isil at the moment, day after day – there is a risk to our fearless armed forces when we put them in harm’s way”.
“Isis poses a very direct threat to the United Kingdom – and as we have already seen in Iraq, British airstrikes can play a key role in degrading them; but they are only part of a comprehensive strategy for Syria”, Cameron told the Tory MPs.
Louise Haigh, a Labour opponent of air strikes, had earlier said that she was told by a national security adviser that the politics of more than 40 percent of that figure were of questionable origins.
Deep divisions in the Labour Party continue to spiral amid warnings of recriminations for MPs supporting David Cameron’s plans to extend military action against Islamic State (IS) into Syria. Yesterday morning, Diane Abbott, one of Mr Corbyn’s closest allies, said that offering Labour MPs a free vote would “hand victory” to the Prime Minister.
Corbyn’s spokesman was reported to have responded that this was a “contemptible slur”.
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The committee’s Conservative chairman Crispin Blunt had said Cameron had gone far enough and indicated that he would support military action. After days of scrapping between those who believe there is a compelling case, and those who are convinced there is no case, it is an attempt by the Deputy Leader to suggest that Labour can still unite around important questions on the detail of the Prime Minister’s case while reaching different conclusions about that argument.
