Jeremy Corbyn heading for showdown with shadow cabinet over Syria air strikes

Corbyn, the Islington North MP who won the Labour leader race with more than half of the votes earlier this year, said: “I feel there are some people who haven’t quite got used to the idea that the party is in a different place. I think that would be wrong in this particular instance because I think people have very strong views one way or another”.

The Labour leader, who has spent the last couple of days amassing evidence of grass roots support for his position, is expected to deliver a riposte to critics in a high-profile interview.

“And the problem about a free vote is that it hands victory to Cameron over these airstrikes, it hands victory to him on a plate”.

“My argument is yes there is military action that is being taken over the skies of Syria”. We’re all simply working through the issues and coming to final decision. The leader’s decision avoids the threat of shadow cabinet resignations but will make it far easier for David Cameron to achieve the “clear majority” he seeks for air strikes.

If Corbyn does impose a three-line whip and try to make Labour MPs vote against air strikes, Honeyman predicted that some of his frontbench team could quit.

Mr Betts, who represents Sheffield South East, said he hadn’t made his mind up whether to back airstrikes and added the Government should postpone calling a Commons vote beyond this week to allow for more briefings and scrutiny of the proposed action. The UK is now participating in US-led airstrikes in Iraq.

He claimed the RAF’s precision airstrikes had not claimed a single civilian life during action taken against IS in Iraq, and that Britain had “very strict rules of engagement”, and warned that the UK’s reputation would be damaged and the population less safe if action was not taken in Syria.

However, one senior Labour source, who is not in Corbyn’s camp, said Labour MPs seemed to have become more wary of backing military action over the weekend for fear of “marking their card” and getting singled out as targets for possible deselection by activists.

“But the truth is we now know the party as a whole, in the country and even within the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party), is opposed to these bombings and they are looking to Jeremy to show leadership”. I think on this issue you have to do what is right.

“I want on these sort of issues an unwhipped vote, because they are above party politics”, he said.

The defiant appearance on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show will have done nothing to ease tensions with his shadow cabinet, where there have been warnings of resignations.

It has said it will call a vote on targeting the group, which it refers to as Isil, only when it is sure to win.

But former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain has questioned whether Labour can present itself as a shadow government if it does not have an official position on a matter as momentous as going to war.

“I understand dissent, I understand disagreement in leadership”.

When asked whether MPs would be given a free vote, Mr Corbyn said: “No decision has been made on that yet, I am going to find out what MPs think”.

Mr Murray acknowledged reports of women and children being raped and the persecution of homosexuals, but said the people living in IS’s Syrian heartland of Raqqa do not want air strikes and the free Syrian army does not have the capacity to support them.