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Syria airstrikes: Cameron wins vote by majority of 174 – live
Rolling coverage of the Commons debate before the vote, expected after 10pm, on extending airstrikes against Isis to Syria
Jeremy Corbyn opens the Syria airstrikes debate for Labour.
Andrew Sparrow and Frances Perraudin
Wednesday 2 December 2015 22.50 GMT
Hilary Benn's speech - Analysis and all the key extracts
Andrew Sparrow
Today’s debate will be remembered for Hilary Benn’s extraordinary wind-up speech, in which he powerfully (but politely) challenged his own leader and asserted Labour’s claim to the party of activist, hard-edged internationalism. The Nato tradition in the party has always been much more dominant than the pacifist tradition and Benn reached back into history, and to Labour’s role in the creation of the United Nations after the second world war, to justify supporting airstrikes. It is very, very rare for MPs to applaud in the Commons but they applauded Benn because they recognised that this was something special (just as they applauded Robin Cook when he spoke against the Iraq war in 2003). Even before today people were speculating about Benn as an alternative party leader; after tonight that chatter will only grow louder.
Here are key extracts from the speech.
Introduction
Although my right honourable friend the leader of the opposition and I will walk into different division lobbies tonight. I am proud to speak from the same dispatch box as him. My right honourable friend is not a terrorist sympathizer. He is an honest, a principled, a decent and a good man and I think the prime minister must now regret what he said yesterday and his failure to do what he should have done today which is to say sorry...
The question which confronts us in a very, very complex conflict is – at its heart – very simple. What we do with others to confront this threat to our citizens, our nation, other nations and the people who suffer under the cruel yoke of Daesh. The carnage in Paris brought home to us the clear and present danger we face from them. It could just as easily have been London or Glasgow or Leeds or Birmingham and it could still be...
The threat of Isil
It was a Labour government that helped to found the United Nations at the end of the second world war and why did we do so? Because we wanted the nations of the world to work together to deal with threats to international peace and security. And Daesh is unquestionably that …
Now Mr Speaker, no one in this debate doubts the deadly serious threat we face from Daesh and what they do, although sometimes we find it hard to live from the reality.
We know that in June, four gay men were thrown off the fifth story of a building [in a Syrian city]. We know that in August the 82-year-old guardian of the antiquities of Palmyra, Professor Khaled al-Asaad, was beheaded and his beheaded body was hung from a traffic light. And we know that in recent weeks there has been the discovery of mass graves in Sinjar, one containing the bodies of older Yazidi women murdered by Daesh because they were judged too old to be sold for sex.
We know they have killed 30 British tourists in Tunisia. 224 Russian holidaymakers on a plane. 178 people in suicide bombings in Beirut, Ankara and Surat. 130 people in Paris, including those young people in the Bataclan, whom Daesh in trying to justify their slaughter called them apostates engaged in prostitution and vice. If it had happened here, they could have been our children and we know that they are plotting more attacks.
Standing with the French
So the question is this, given that we know what they are doing, can we really stand aside and refuse to act fully in our self defence against those who are planning those attacks.can we really leave to others the responsibility for defending our national security when it is our responsibility and if they do we do not act what kind of message would that send about our solidarity with those countries that have suffered so much including Iraq and our ally France.
Now France wants us to stand with them and President Hollande the leader of our sister socialist party has asked for our assistance and help...
To his Labour colleagues
Mr Speaker, I hope the House will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues on this side of the house. As a party, we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility, one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road.
And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight and all of the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy – the means by which we will make our decision tonight – in contempt.
And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated and it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists were just one part of the international brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It’s why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice and my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion tonight.
Syria airstrikes: Cameron wins vote by majority of 174 – live | Politics | The Guardian
Rolling coverage of the Commons debate before the vote, expected after 10pm, on extending airstrikes against Isis to Syria
- Cameron says UK has moral and military duty to attack Isis in Syria
- Opening speeches - snap verdict
- 5 of the best speeches so far
- Summary at 6pm - key points from the debate
- 5 more of the best speeches from the debate
Jeremy Corbyn opens the Syria airstrikes debate for Labour.
Andrew Sparrow and Frances Perraudin
Wednesday 2 December 2015 22.50 GMT
- 1m agoHilary Benn's speech - Analysis and all the key extracts
- 20m agoGovernment wins vote on airstrikes by majority of 174
- 21m ago67 Labour MPs voted with the government on airstrikes, source says
- 35m agoGovernment wins first vote on Syria airstrikes by 390 votes to 211 - a majority of 179
- 39m agoMPs praise Hilary Benn's speech
- 1h agoPhilip Hammond's speech
- 5h agoSummary of key points from the Syria airstrikes debate so far
Hilary Benn's speech - Analysis and all the key extracts
Andrew Sparrow
Today’s debate will be remembered for Hilary Benn’s extraordinary wind-up speech, in which he powerfully (but politely) challenged his own leader and asserted Labour’s claim to the party of activist, hard-edged internationalism. The Nato tradition in the party has always been much more dominant than the pacifist tradition and Benn reached back into history, and to Labour’s role in the creation of the United Nations after the second world war, to justify supporting airstrikes. It is very, very rare for MPs to applaud in the Commons but they applauded Benn because they recognised that this was something special (just as they applauded Robin Cook when he spoke against the Iraq war in 2003). Even before today people were speculating about Benn as an alternative party leader; after tonight that chatter will only grow louder.
Here are key extracts from the speech.
Introduction
Although my right honourable friend the leader of the opposition and I will walk into different division lobbies tonight. I am proud to speak from the same dispatch box as him. My right honourable friend is not a terrorist sympathizer. He is an honest, a principled, a decent and a good man and I think the prime minister must now regret what he said yesterday and his failure to do what he should have done today which is to say sorry...
The question which confronts us in a very, very complex conflict is – at its heart – very simple. What we do with others to confront this threat to our citizens, our nation, other nations and the people who suffer under the cruel yoke of Daesh. The carnage in Paris brought home to us the clear and present danger we face from them. It could just as easily have been London or Glasgow or Leeds or Birmingham and it could still be...
The threat of Isil
It was a Labour government that helped to found the United Nations at the end of the second world war and why did we do so? Because we wanted the nations of the world to work together to deal with threats to international peace and security. And Daesh is unquestionably that …
Now Mr Speaker, no one in this debate doubts the deadly serious threat we face from Daesh and what they do, although sometimes we find it hard to live from the reality.
We know that in June, four gay men were thrown off the fifth story of a building [in a Syrian city]. We know that in August the 82-year-old guardian of the antiquities of Palmyra, Professor Khaled al-Asaad, was beheaded and his beheaded body was hung from a traffic light. And we know that in recent weeks there has been the discovery of mass graves in Sinjar, one containing the bodies of older Yazidi women murdered by Daesh because they were judged too old to be sold for sex.
We know they have killed 30 British tourists in Tunisia. 224 Russian holidaymakers on a plane. 178 people in suicide bombings in Beirut, Ankara and Surat. 130 people in Paris, including those young people in the Bataclan, whom Daesh in trying to justify their slaughter called them apostates engaged in prostitution and vice. If it had happened here, they could have been our children and we know that they are plotting more attacks.
Standing with the French
So the question is this, given that we know what they are doing, can we really stand aside and refuse to act fully in our self defence against those who are planning those attacks.can we really leave to others the responsibility for defending our national security when it is our responsibility and if they do we do not act what kind of message would that send about our solidarity with those countries that have suffered so much including Iraq and our ally France.
Now France wants us to stand with them and President Hollande the leader of our sister socialist party has asked for our assistance and help...
To his Labour colleagues
Mr Speaker, I hope the House will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues on this side of the house. As a party, we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility, one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road.
And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight and all of the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy – the means by which we will make our decision tonight – in contempt.
And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated and it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists were just one part of the international brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It’s why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice and my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion tonight.
Syria airstrikes: Cameron wins vote by majority of 174 – live | Politics | The Guardian
This is without counting Britain’s 10 Reaper drones, based in Kuwait and flown from RAF crews based in the UK. 
my money is on Su-35!!!!
