Polly Toynbee: Cameron’s neat and clear path to peace is far from the chaos of Syria
“A bunch of terrorist sympathisers” – that’s the low, cheap David Cameron, the one whose mask so often slips when the cameras are turned away. Base politics or genuine conviction: which is driving us on this path to war? Both, no doubt, with motives never pure and unmixed on either side of the House.
But as one angry MP after another from every other party demanded he withdraw this squalid smear, how hard would it have been to say sorry? Had he apologised quickly and with grace, he might have succeeded in putting a stronger case for the Syrian bombing, raising the tone of this defining debate. Why on earth not? No one at all thinks Islamic State is anything but the mass-slaughtering, woman-raping, aid worker-murdering, death-cult of “these evil people”, as Cameron called them.
The wisest people polled may be the large number of “don’t know” people: how can anyone know if more good than harm will flow from this bombing? But MPs – and we voters – are forced to decide. When 12 women and children were killed by bombs in Raqqa a few days ago, no one knew if they were US, Russian or French bombs: what use are we adding to that confusion in the air?
Did Cameron make the case? The more certain he sounded about those disjointed 70,000 troops, the greater the lacunas of uncertainty. His vision of success had an ominously familiar ring as he promised “a reconstructed Syria with a government than can represent all the people”. Who could deny that’s an admirable goal? But remember, with a shudder, the Bush/Blair golden delusion of a new Iraq that would be the beacon of democracy radiating enlightenment across the entire Middle East.
Every attempt Cameron made to suggest a neat and clear path to peace displayed that same Whitehall armchair delusion, so far removed from the Syrian chaos.
Mark Wallace: Where was the practical alternative to airstrikes?
This is meant to be Jeremy Corbyn’s home turf – after all, he has spent most of the past three decades reciting the same old cant against supposed imperialism. Unfortunately for his supporters, today we saw exactly why his 32 years of campaigning as an MP have borne so little fruit: it’s a weak case, which he isn’t very good at making.
He was polite, as he always is at the dispatch box – certainly more polite than the prime minister’s misfiring comments to the 1922 Committee the night before. However, there was no sharp edge beneath the good manners, no crucial question or extra fact that fatally undermined the case for action.
His warnings of “unintended consequences” would have carried more weight if he hadn’t quoted Barack Obama, who is currently implementing airstrikes against Isis in Syria. The argument that there is an alternative route of seeking an end to the Syrian civil war would have packed more punch if it had been developed beyond a meaningless platitude. The fact that he couldn’t do so revealed the fundamental weakness of his case: the opposition is not proposing a practical alternative.
The inevitable conclusion is that the paucity of his argument on this case is due to the fact that his position is instead based on his general opposition to all British military intervention, anywhere, any time and for any reason. That was made all too clear when John Woodcock asked him to commit his support for continued airstrikes in Iraq, and he notably failed to do so. Ultimately, Corbyn’s speech will have done nothing to win over Labour MPs who are minded to vote with the government.
