Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
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The British Parliament plans to vote over the matter in the coming week, as Prime Minister David Cameron pushes for an expanded military role in the region.
Mr Murray said he and Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale thought the case had not been made for air strikes.
Jeremy Corbyn has set the stage for a showdown with his own shadow cabinet after insisting that he alone has the final decision on whether Labour opposes air strikes in Syria.
Abbott, the worldwide shadow development secretary and Corbyn ally, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he should face down his internal critics.
Mr Byrne said of the Labour leader: “I don’t think that writing letters that prejudge the outcome, the conclusion of the shadow cabinet position, was a good way of approaching this”. That gives him unique clout in the shadow cabinet, the NEC and on the Commons benches.
Corbyn refused to accept that it had been a “terrible” week for the Labour party, despite the split over Syria, remarks from Ken Livingstone that Tony Blair was to blame for the 7/7 London bombings, and John McDonnell quoting Mao Zedong from the dispatch box.
The move was seen by some as an attempt to pre-empt next week’s shadow cabinet meeting while appealing over the head of MPs to the grass roots members who swept Mr Corbyn to the leadership.
Jeremy Corbyn has been urged to order his MPs to vote against air strikes on Islamic State (IS) in Syria after a survey of members indicated overwhelming opposition to extending the UK’s bombing campaign.
Last week Mr Cameron said launching air strikes against Jihadists in Syria will make Britain “safer”.
The prime minister denied claims it would make the United Kingdom a bigger target for terror attacks, as he made the case for military action in the Commons.
Corbyn told the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that he would ultimately decide whether MPs were allowed a free vote, putting him on a collision course with senior parliamentarians and potentially throwing the government’s plans into disarray.
While many in Labour fear more air strikes will bring more instability to the Middle East, some of the party’s leading members have said they are necessary to ensure Britain’s security.
“He hasn’t given any indication of the decision on the process but his decision is not to bomb and I think that is the position of it looks like the majority of our party members and quite a few Conservative MPs now”.
“The problem about a free vote is it hands victory to Cameron on these air strikes, it hands victory to him on a plate”.
“I think it is incredibly important for us not to turn this into a question and debate about the inner workings and mechanisms of a shadow cabinet, which is 30 people sitting round a table in the bubble of Westminster”.
However, Government Whips believe a number of Tory sceptics have now been won over, and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond have spent the weekend working to convince individual Labour MPs. The rebellious MPs persuaded Corbyn that MPs were to have a free vote, which means party whips will not be able to influence their decision.
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Corbyn said bombing would lead inevitably to civilian casualties and risks making the situation “worse, not better”.
