Shadow Chancellor Says Labour MPs Allowed Free Vote on Syria Airstrikes

Mr Corbyn faced warnings of resignations after he wrote to Labour MPs expressing his opposition to air strikes and rejecting the prime minister’s case for military action.

He endorsed the idea of giving Labour MPs a free vote and recalled that it was a “horrendous mistake” that MPs were “whipped and threatened and pushed” into supporting “something many of them did not believe in” during the vote on the Iraq war.

It comes ahead of a series of crunch meetings due to take place on Monday.

The French President thanked Britain for the support it has shown his country following the atrocity and said he hoped that Parliament would now back the case for air strikes put forward by David Cameron. On Friday it was reported that only four members of Corbyn’s 31-strong top team were on his side. This was before Mr Corbyn and Labour shadow ministers received a government briefing on the threat posed by Isis.

The Momentum group of Labour activists, set up to help the leader, is expected to lobby politicians intensively.

The Scottish National Party’s Angus Robertson said his legislators would not support airstrikes without effective ground support and “a fully costed reconstruction and stability plan”. “There is no effective ground force to back us up…and we’re going to be relying on groups in the Free Syrian Army apparently who are hundreds of miles away, whose main interest is fighting Assad anyway”.

A copy of the email, seen by The IoS, titled “Labour against bombing Syria”, dropped into MPs’ inboxes at 11.01pm on Wednesday. I think it will have the opposite effect.

The MP for Hayes and Harlington, Middlesex, believes that MPs should be able to follow their “own judgement” on the decision to allow air strikes over the worn-torn nation.

His call to British MPs came at a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Malta, and hours after he attended a memorial in Paris where each victim of the Paris attacks had their read aloud.

Mr Corbyn is expected to suffer a further blow in a key by-election on Thursday, with some party figures fearing Labour could even lose the previously safe seat of Oldham West and Royton to Ukip.

“Obviously I’ve not read them all”, he told Andrew Marr.

“I think he’s trying to mount a coup against the shadow cabinet”, Mr Spellar said.

In a Stop the War letter to the prime minister, signed by actors, writers and musicians, it says: “The current rush to bomb Syria following the bad events in Paris risks a unsafe escalation which will inflame the war there and increase bitterness against the west”.

“All you can do it take military action”.

David Cameron could bring the question to the Commons as early as Tuesday – but has made clear he will not do so unless he is certain of securing a majority in favour.

“My view as both an individual and an elected councillor is that when I stood for council I made promises which the public expect me to keep”, the 63-year-old Park ward representative Cllr Burke said.