After 10 reasonably dismal hours, Hilary Benn has just given a truly historic speech in the House of Commons. (Here’s the full text.) The Shadow Foreign Secretary garnered loud applause and an emotional waving of order papers from members across the house. His colleagues tell me he wrote much of it while sitting on the frontbench in the Commons during the debate.
Benn made the only truly spellbinding argument in the whole of this largely unimpressive debate. He ran through why he believed that the conditions for action had been met, appealing as he spoke to Labour’s heritage. He was furious and passionate but impressively generous towards the man who claims to lead him, telling the Chamber that Corbyn was not a terrorist sympathiser as David Cameron alleged but a man of principle.
He ran through the crimes of Islamic State, outlined the consequences of inaction and argued that the border between Iraq and Syria no longer existed.
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