Isabel Hardman

One of the lines doing the rounds this morning in the post-mortem of what this means for David Cameron's leadership is that it shows yet again that backbenchers do not trust the Prime Minister. This is true, but it is worth being as specific as possible. This rebellion was not like the other revolts over Europe and House of Lords reform, where it was as much about sticking two fingers to the leadership for not listening to MPs as it was about the issues at stake, serious though they are. The number of conversations I've held with backbenchers in the run-up to and aftermath of those votes made it quite clear that if they didn't hate Cameron so much, they might have calmed down. But this rebellion stuck more closely to principle than politics.

When will today's politicians be able to stop wrestling with Tony Blair's ghost? Not for a while it seems - partly because they don't want to. George Osborne decided to use the Kind of Spin as a means of spinning last night's terrible defeat for the Coalition government on Syria when he appeared on the Today programme. As well as referring to the shadow Blair and Iraq cast over the debate, yesterday, the Chancellor made clear that the Prime Minister had tried to shake off that shadow by conducting things 'in a different approach'. he said: 'The shadow of Iraq pervaded the whole debate yesterday both on the media and in Parliament and at times MPs on both sides of the argument actually by mistake used Saddam Hussein's name instead of Assad's name.

Ed Miliband has now confirmed that he will table a Labour amendment to the government's motion on Syria, demanding that the Prime Minister return to the Commons once the UN weapons inspectors have reported, thereby delaying the main vote on intervention. And Labour will vote against the government's motion. Whether you think this is a wise move from Miliband depends partly on whether you think he's as worried as some in the Conservative party are about the case for intervention, the lack of evidence and the legality of it, or whether you suspect that this is more about the problems supporting intervention outright would have caused a party still haunted by Iraq, and the lack of public support for military action.

The government has yet to compose the motion that MPs will debate and vote on in tomorrow's Commons debate on Syria. And while some MPs are making clear that they are very nervous about the prospect of intervention, many others are yet to make up their minds. This means that as they return to Parliament today and tomorrow ahead of the debate (which starts at 2.30pm), they are sitting targets for the whips. There are some MPs like John Baron who are clear that they do not support intervention. Then there are a number of independently-minded MPs like Douglas Carswell and Sarah Wollaston who aren't worth much of a whip's time: it won't make any difference to how they cast their vote.

David Cameron has just confirmed that Parliament will be recalled on Thursday for MPs to vote on a government motion regarding the response to the chemical attacks in Syria. In reality, it would have been very difficult for the government to do anything else. But the question now is whether the statement that is offered to MPs is enough firstly to convince wavering coalition MPs of the case for intervention (and the case for the specific intervention chosen) and secondly to convince the Labour party not to whip its MPs against the vote: something Douglas Alexander this morning warned could happen.

It would be a surprise if, when the Prime Minister and colleagues make their decision on consulting Parliament on intervening in Syria, they don't settle for some form of debate. An early day motion by Graham Allen demanding a recall of Parliament has swiftly accrued signatures from MPs of all parties, including Douglas Carswell, Stewart Jackson, David Davies, Graham Stuart, Philip Davies, Martin Vickers, James Gray, and Adam Holloway. But the question is how Parliament will be consulted. A vote on action would still be dangerous.