Parliament has today voted to authorise the Tory Government to bomb Syria. The majority was, in the end, huge: the substantive motion authorising action was passed by 397 votes to 223 – but let’s get this in proportion.
First, the UK has been bombing sites in Iraq in recent months and still has troops in Afghanistan (on “training” duties). This vote is a bad step forward, but it is only a further step forward from a place we should not have been.
Second, other countries are bombing Syria already: the amount of bombing the UK intends to add may not be that noticeable, given the weight of bombs already raining down on what’s left of Syria.
These points are not to try to make light of tonight’s decisions: they are just to show that the UK is part of an international alliance that is trying to keep western countries in the driving seat of a new world order, set up and enforced by arms rather than respect or shared values.
The people of the UK, in all our diversity, need to look hard at our MPs and decide if they are up to the job. It’s no good voting Tory on the basis of a quick election bribe – a hint you might be able to buy your council or housing association flat. The voting list has not yet been released by the House of Commons, but if our two Tower Hamlets MPs stuck to the intentions they announced earlier this week, it seems the two MPs voted two different ways, cancelling each other out, as it were. Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green & Bow, will receive some credit for respecting the views of her electorate and voting against bombing. On the other hand, Jim Fitzpatrick MP will have surprised many of his electors by voting for. He does have his reasons, and his electors may like to ask him what they are.
On one positive note, for all the talk in the mainstream media of a Labour rebellion, of Labour MPs selected by a couple of hundred local party members trying to show they know better than a leader elected by tens of thousands, many more Labour MPs voted against bombing than last year. In 2014, only 24 Labour MPs voted against bombing Iraq: this year, nearly 200 will have voted against bombing Syria.
It is time for the electorate to get involved in these life and death decisions and make sure our MPs properly understand what the people want.