Labour to get free vote on air war

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.

David Cameron will recommend to the Cabinet this morning that there will be a debate and vote in the House of Commons on a motion to extend the bombing of IS in Syria. And it emerged last night that the vote will be held as early as tomorrow.

Mr Cameron said in a statement last night that the group poses a “very direct threat to the United Kingdom” and that strikes in Iraq had been shown to be an effective way of degrading them.

However he emphasised there must also be a political solution.

A Labour source said Shadow Foreign Secretary and Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn is to lead those in the party who are backing strikes in Parliament while Jeremy Corbyn will try and further his personal view that military action is not justified.

While admitting the arrangement was “certainly unusual”, a Labour source insisted: “I don’t think it’s shambolic. “It’s taking account of the fact that there are very significant differences of opinion, as we know, in the Shadow Cabinet about this issue.”

The free vote is seen as a major blow to Stop the War campaigners and the Jeremy Corbyn spin-off group Momentum whichemailed members asking them to lobby their MP against strikes over the weekend.

It’s understood that after a busy weekend for the Conservative party phoning members to get an indication of how they’d vote, there could now be enough Labour politicians to give David Cameron a majority, and help him achieve his much sought-after cross-party support.

Shadow Cabinet members were tight-lipped following the two-hour meeting, and leader of the House of Commons Chris Bryant told lobby correspondents he had to dash to another engagement. Opposition chief whip Rosie Winterton walked past the media in silence.

Labour MP for Redcar Anna Soubry, who was one of the few MPs who addressed the media after her a ‘new members’ briefing with the Ministry of Defence said she was pleased that Mr Corbyn had decided on a free vote.

She said: “I’m still considering after the briefing but I will make up my mind up based on the evidence and based on what’s in the best interests of the country, not on politics or sentimentality.”

Wakefield MP Mary Creagh told PM she was “glad” the party’s MPs wouldn’t be told how to vote.

She said: “It was clear that any vote to support our French and US allies in Syria attacking the murderous barbarism of Islamic State was going to cause difficulties for the party and has split the party right down the middle.

“I think we are in the right place.”

A spokesperson for Mr Corbyn said: “Shadow Cabinet agreed to back Jeremy Corbyn’s recommendation of a free vote on the Government’s proposal to authorise UK bombing in Syria.

“The Shadow Cabinet decided to support the call for David Cameron to step back from the rush to war and hold a full two day debate in the House of Commons 
on such a crucial national decision.”

Labour said the debate would give time to get answers on how to accelerate the end of the civil war and what ground troops would take territory evacuated by IS.

Safe hands for Labour? 
Page 11.