Whips struggle with emergency debate on Syria

This afternoon’s emergency debate on Syria isn’t quite working out as anyone had really planned. For Labour, it was an opportunity to undermine the government by complaining about the lack of parliamentary consent for the weekend strikes on the Assad regime’s chemical weapons capability. For the Tories, it was an opportunity to show that there was still strong support across the House for that action. Some MPs may even have come along to debate the principles in question; namely the balance of powers between executive and legislature.

Jeremy Corbyn certainly tried to pitch it thus when he spoke, arguing that what the Prime Minister had done was anti-democratic:

‘It seems the convention established in 2003 and in the Cabinet Manual is being tossed aside as simply being inconvenient, and so Mr Speaker, I believe it’s necessary and urgent that this house has the opportunity to discuss its rights and responsibilities in decisions on UK military intervention which is not currently codified by law and which as we have discovered in recent days cannot be guaranteed by convention alone.’