Syria

Friday

Sebastian Payne

What’s really driving Labour’s row over Syria?

From our UK edition

Is Labour working through its policy differences on bombing Syria or is the shadow cabinet genuinely split? The New Politics dictates that public debate and consultations should be encouraged, so the Corbynites don't see a problem with the current situation. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, tweeted this morning to ask everyone to 'calm down' because Labour is going through the process of deciding its position on Syria: https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/670181630678597633 Diane Abbott, the shadow international development secretary and another key Corbyn ally, has told Coffee House that any talk of a free vote on bombing Syria is premature because the position is undecided: 'I think that talk about a free vote is putting the cart before the horse.

Charles Lister

Yes, there are 70,000 moderate opposition fighters in Syria. Here’s what we know about them

From our UK edition

Yesterday David Cameron told Parliament that there are ‘about 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters on the ground who do not belong to extremist groups’ who could help fight Islamic State.  The Prime Minister’s number was the result of an internal assessment made by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), backed up by serving British diplomats overseas whose jobs focus on the Syrian opposition. Such a large number struck many as political exaggeration. The chairman of the Defence Committee, Julian Lewis, said he was 'extremely surprised'. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn may issue a formal demand for clarification. So do these fighters exist and who are they?

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Hilary Benn didn’t see Corbyn’s Commons speech on Syria before he gave it

From our UK edition

Jeremy Corbyn didn’t show his Shadow Foreign Secretary a copy of what he was going to say in response to David Cameron’s statement on Syria, Coffee House understands. Sources have told me that Hilary Benn was spotted sitting outside Corbyn’s office this morning before the Prime Minister made his Commons statement. Benn appeared to be waiting for something. When I asked his spokesman whether Benn had been given advance sight of Corbyn’s planned response to the Prime Minister, the spokesman said ‘no’.

Isabel Hardman

Shadow Cabinet members threaten resignations over Syria row in Labour

From our UK edition

Tonight Labour’s Shadow Cabinet is in uproar over what many of its members see as a fundamental breach of trust from Jeremy Corbyn in writing to the parliamentary party without telling them. ‘Why would you do that?’ asks one shadow minister in utter bafflement. They thought it odd that Corbyn had read from a printed statement about his position on strikes in the meeting, rather than addressing them directly, but odder still that he just hadn’t thought to tell them that he would be writing this letter. There is a suspicion that this evening’s letter is part of a co-ordinated effort with grassroots organisation Momentum to make MPs’ lives miserable over the next few days as they are subjected to furious lobbying from their local parties.

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn won’t support intervention in Syria, but what will he ask his frontbenchers to do?

From our UK edition

It would be a great surprise if Jeremy Corbyn did personally back British air strikes against Islamic State in Syria. So the most interesting thing about his response to the Prime Minister’s statement was whether the Labour leader gave much of a clue as to what he would require his party to do when a vote comes to the Commons. The Shadow Cabinet will meet shortly to discuss this, and from the looks on the faces of some of his shadow ministers as he spoke, it appears that Corbyn will face some debate about the points he made. Corbyn did not rail against the Prime Minister’s desire for action, but asked for more detail on what he envisaged. His questions did sound a little familiar, though.

Steerpike

Alex Salmond misses the Syria debate (but finds time to unveil his portrait)

From our UK edition

MPs in the Commons are currently debating whether or not to vote in favour of airstrikes in Syria, after the Prime Minister delivered a statement on the issue this morning. As members of the opposition -- including Dennis Skinner and Chris Leslie -- raise questions over the potential airstrikes, where are the self-titled 'real opposition'? Well, for all their talk, the SNP's foreign affairs spokesperson is nowhere to be seen during this Westminster debate. Instead Alex Salmond has decided it is the opportune time to take a trip up to Edinburgh to attend First Minister's Questions at Scottish Parliament.

The Spectator

Full text and audio: Corbyn’s seven questions to Cameron on Syria

From our UK edition

I would like to thank the Prime Minister for providing an advance copy of his remarks. After the despicable and horrific attacks in Paris a fortnight ago the whole House will, I’m sure, agree that our first priority must be the security of Britain and the safety of the British people. So when we consider the Prime Minister’s case for military action in Syria, the issue of whether what he proposes strengthens - or undermines - our national security must be front and centre stage. There is no doubt that the so-called Islamic State group has imposed a reign of terror on millions in Iraq, Syria and Libya. All that ISIS stands for and does is contrary to everything those of us on these benches have struggled for over generations.

James Forsyth

Cameron insists the UK must attack IS in Syria, but only with a ‘clear majority’ in the House

From our UK edition

David Cameron came to the Commons today to make the case for the UK extending its bombing campaign against Islamic State to Syria. His tone was as emollient as possible, as he responded to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee report which argued that the UK should not do this. He said that the UK could provide unique capabilities and that there are 70,000 non-extremist, Syrian fighters who could act as a ground force to support the bombing campaign. He stressed that as long as the Islamic State ‘Caliphate’ exists, it would act as a rallying cry for Islamist extremists around the world and that it had ‘repeatedly’ tried to attack the UK.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron sets out his case for bombing Islamic State in Syria

From our UK edition

In the past few minutes, David Cameron has published his response to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the case for British action against Islamic State in Syria. You can read the response here. The Prime Minister argues that the threat to Britain is so great that ‘now is the time to scale up British diplomatic, defence and humanitarian efforts to resolve the Syrian conflict and to defeat ISIL’. 'The threat Isil poses to Britain and to our citizens today is serious and undeniable’, he says, warning that Britain must act before the terrorists succeed in an attack again this country. Cameron’s challenge from MPs was to set out what Britain could actually achieve by joining the strikes, and what the objective of the campaign would be.

Anonymous

Military action against Isis needs a coherent strategy. . . . here it is

From our UK edition

Like most British soldiers of my generation, I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Few would now justify the reasons for invading Iraq; most of us who fought there at first recognised the amateurish nature of the strategy and its lack of realistic political objectives. But in 2007, under General Petraeus, the coalition adopted a new strategy that was underpinned by coherent policy. This stemmed from the recognition that unless common cause was found with moderate Sunnis, a workable Iraqi polity could never be established. The rapid improvements that flowed from this change were impressive but disgracefully shortlived.

Andrew J.

The pretend war: bombing Isil won’t solve the problem

From our UK edition

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatfakewar/media.mp3" title="Andrew J. Bacevich and Con Coughlin discuss the West's war with Isis" startat=35] Listen [/audioplayer]Not so long ago, David Cameron declared that he was not some ‘naive neocon who thinks you can drop democracy out of an aeroplane at 40,000 feet’. Just a few weeks after making that speech, Cameron authorised UK forces to join in the bombing of Libya — where the outcome reaffirmed this essential lesson. Soon Cameron will ask parliament to share his ‘firm conviction’ that bombing Raqqa, the Syrian headquarters of the Islamic State, has become ‘imperative’. At first glance, the case for doing so appears compelling.

Freddy Gray

Corbyn’s defence

From our UK edition

What strange people we Brits are. We spend years moaning that our politicians are cynical opportunists who don’t stand for anything. Then along comes an opposition leader who has principles — and appears to stick by them even when it makes him unpopular — and he is dismissed as a joke. Jeremy Corbyn has been ridiculed in recent days for the feebleness of his foreign policy. It is widely agreed that his positions on terrorism and Isis show how unelectable and useless he is. At the same time, we say he is a grave threat to national security. But what has Corbyn said that is so stupid or dangerous? In the wake of the attacks in Paris, he declared that Britain ‘must not be drawn into responses that feed the cycle of violence and hate’.

Isabel Hardman

What Muslims think

From our UK edition

Do you have sympathy with young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria? It’s a hard question to answer: perhaps you’d wonder who the ‘fighters’ were. Or whether the ‘young Muslims’ were 14-year-old girls, groomed by fanatics to be jihadi brides. But if you answer ‘yes’, you may be surprised to find yourself described as having ‘sympathy for jihadis’. Such are the perils awaiting British Muslims who respond to opinion poll questions. The Sun this week found itself in a row about a front-page headline: 1 IN 5 BRIT MUSLIMS’ SYMPATHY FOR JIHADIS.

Hugo Rifkind

Get ready: these climate change talks might actually do something

From our UK edition

The Prince of Wales is right, and I appreciate that this isn’t something people say very often. Now and again, certainly, Prince Charles does turn out to be right about things, such as the need for interfaith dialogue or the horrors of some modern architecture, but the manner in which he tends to be right about them does rather have the feel of happy coincidence. In the future, as Warhol didn’t quite say, we will all be right for 15 minutes. Unless it’s about homeopathy. This week, you see, the Prince told Sky News that the war in Syria may be linked to climate change. Not, please note, that it was caused by climate change, let alone man-made climate change. His view is very much not that, if more of us drove electric cars, Raqqa would be at peace.

Kate Chisholm

You can’t forget what Will Self says – even if you wish you could

From our UK edition

It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign in Syria — and not a word was spoken. Martha Kearney called it an ‘audio graphic’ on the World at One on Monday and explained how Neal Razzell and James Beard for the World Service had been monitoring the number of US combat missions on Islamic State targets in Syria, hour by hour, 24/7, and comparing them with earlier bombing campaigns. Each electronic beat we heard represents one hour, Razzell told us; each beep represents the launch of one combat mission. For Syria, the electronic beeps between each beat were quite far apart — clearly distinguishable. The sound we heard represented two raids an hour, he explained, every day for 450 days.

Tuesday

Kate Maltby

How can we defend our liberal heritage by abandoning its values?

From our UK edition

Yusuf, when I last saw him, was still smiling, a middle-aged man with the greying pony-tail of a rock roadie. He described himself as a feminist: he met his wife through work, where, he told me proudly, she was a better computer engineer than he. Yusuf had the stoop of a tall man who’d spent most of his life under ceilings too low for him, and the corrugated iron hut his family now called home was no exception. So we sat cross-legged on the floor, while I asked him about religious tensions in a southern Turkish refugee camp. 'If you want to know, I’m an atheist. I mean, in Damascus, my friends all were - it’s not like you’re living in a village, your grandfather checking you’re in mosque. I don’t believe in any of it. But I never shouted about it.

Fraser Nelson

Syrian war heats up as Turkey shoots down a Russian jet

From our UK edition

The complications of acting in Syria have just become more apparent. The Russians are fighting in support of Assad – but Turkey, a Nato member, is backing anti-Assad rebels and has just shot down a Russian Su-24 jet. The Turkish foreign ministry says that the pilots were warned ‘ten times in five minutes’ that they were violating Turkish airspace. The pilots managed to eject and video footage has emerged:- The aircraft came down near the Antakya mountains, where Turkmen rebels (backed by Turkey) are fighting Isil and Assad's forces (blue areas, below). The Su-24s, owned by both Assad's regime and Russia itself, have been bombing rebel positions for some time.

Sebastian Payne

Labour supporters are still backing Jeremy Corbyn in droves

From our UK edition

The Tories may be steaming ahead in the national opinion polls but the Labour grassroots are still pleased with Jeremy Corbyn. According to a new poll from The Times and YouGov — who surveyed the Labour membership during the leadership contest and predicted Corbyn's victory — two thirds of members think the leader is doing ‘well’. He continues to have the overwhelming support of those who backed him during the leadership contest too: 83 per cent of this group say he is doing well. It’s not just the Corbyn backers within Labour who are pleased with his performance — almost half of those who voted for Andy Burnham this summer think the leader is doing well, as do 29 per cent of Yvette Cooper’s backers.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Tory whips woo Labour MPs ahead of Syria vote

From our UK edition

As David Cameron confirmed in his statement to the Commons today, he will set out his strategy on attacking Islamic State in Syria on Thursday. MPs will then get the weekend to consider their positions, with a vote expected next week. A number of odd things are happening in preparation for this vote. One is that the Tory whips are being incredibly nice to people they normally ignore: Labour MPs. I understand that there is a briefing scheduled for Wednesday for Labour MPs at the Ministry of Defence, with a similar one for Tory MPs at a separate time. As I said this morning, it looks as though Labour MPs will help Cameron get the ‘biggest possible majority’ that he told the Commons he was after.