For me, the arguments for and against air strikes against Daesh in Syria are finely balanced, and there is no surprise that reasonable people have come to different views. I am stunned that with the SNP against, Labour split down the middle, and (the BBC predicts) 15 Conservative rebels, we might be the most hawkish party.
I am very glad that Erbil was saved in August 2014 with help from US air strikes when Daesh were rampaging across northern Iraq. Had the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, population 1.5 million, fallen, the death toll and consequences for the region would have been horrific.
But while the effectiveness of air strikes to prevent Daesh advances is clear, when it comes to territory already held and populations already massacred or enslaved, targets are harder to find and potential benefits more remote.
In this context of this difficult fine judgement, with MPs getting more detailed briefings on the military and the diplomatic strategy, than should be widely available, I would be happy to back our MPs either way. I would prefer this kind of question to be on a free vote so that every individual judgement is unimpeded, though it is understandable that when the government whips, others do too.
So I cannot support the scorn poured on Labour for having a free vote, and for the ferocity of their internal battle over how to respond. The more something matters the more it is worth fighting over even if it puts your party in a difficult position.
It gets worse. Yesterday David Cameron urged his MPs not to walk through the voting lobby “with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers”. Read carefully, this is not a slur on Corbyn himself or all opponents of air strike, but it does attempt to taint all sincere opponents of air strikes by association with unnamed terrorist sympathisers. Cheap and nasty.
Cameron's "terrorist sympathisers" comment has cost 20 Labour MPs already suggests a well-placed source. Touch of the Flashman.
— Francis Elliott (@elliotttimes) December 1, 2015
Though it is surely not a good reason to change your vote if you believe air strikes are right.
This feeds a narrative about the left, reinforced by Ken Livingstone’s clumsy (I am being generous) reference to suicide bombers as “laying down their lives”. His subsequent protest asserted that we need to understand terrorists in order to defeat them, but this is still clumsy. The word understanding means both comprehension and sympathy, perhaps because it is a fact of human irrationality that comprehension tends to elicit sympathy. To defeat terrorists we need ice-cold logical comprehension of them, not “understanding”.
If understanding of the sincere reasons for opposing air strikes is lacking in this debate, the converse is just as bad. Supporters of air strikes are accused of wishing to rain bombs down on Syrian civilians, of acting on behalf of the military-industrial complex, of abandoning their values.
I believe most MPs on both sides of the house and on both sides of this vote have weighed the evidence carefully and are trying to do the right thing, faced with two options both of which have terrible consequences. If all 8 of ours vote the same way that may reflect a statistical fluke, or a profound and careful joint consideration.
My ice-cold logical comprehension of those who think this is an easy question is unforgiving, but I understand them.
* Joe Otten is a councillor in Sheffield and Tuesday editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, described by The Liberator as a 'fanatically loyal Clegg acolyte'
