We have not heard enough to justify a new war in Syria

Labour MPs who despair of Corbyn must think very carefully whether they have heard enough from the PM to justify air strikes

Tony Blair and George W. Bush shake hands after a news conference in 2007 Getty (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Here we go again. Before very long, David Cameron will deliver a sombre broadcast from his Prime Ministerial office to announce that the UK is at war once again, sounding and looking Blair-like as he becomes the latest leader to carry the burden of Churchillian responsibility. Outside No 10, various political editors will report the military plans with solemnity, inadvertently giving the false impression that the UK is at the pivotal centre of all activity, once more saving the world from the latest global threat. After which the UK will bomb targets in Syria. And then what will happen?

Before we get to that point, the familiar dance as the UK displays its apparent might on the world stage, let us consider the case the government is putting to justify military action. In an interview on the BBC’s Today programme, the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon explained the strategic thinking. The UK would join its allies in the air campaign against Isis; there would be no British “boots on the ground”, even though he accepted that ground troops would be necessary.

Without pausing for breath, Fallon argued that it would be for a “moderate Syrian government” to provide the boots on the ground. This is quite a leap, like watching a fast-moving TV thriller in which you pop out to make a cup of tea and return to find an apocalyptic nightmare had a happy ending.

Currently, the US and others seek to form a military alliance with Vladimir Putin: they have a common enemy in Isis. But Putin has an alliance with Bashar al-Assad, who regards Isis as an internal force that must be destroyed. Do the Western forces turn on Assad as they work with him in targeting Isis? Does Putin turn on the Western forces as they “install” a “moderate government” in Syria? What form does this ‘moderate’ government take? How is it “installed”?

These questions cannot be answered now, as they could not be answered before the terrible attacks on Paris. No 10 is quoted as arguing simplistically that MPs must decide whether to be Churchill or Chamberlain. Once again a UK Prime Minister turns to the 1930s, when there are no parallels between now and then.

Cameron is not the first to be misdirected by the past. Tony Blair chose not to focus his sharp lawyerly mind on the case against war in Iraq, as he could have done, because he knew such a forensic quest would place him against a US president. With Chamberlain, Suez, the Falklands War and Labour’s approach to defence in the 1980s hovering over his shoulders, Blair chose only to focus on a case that would place him safely “shoulder to shoulder” with a US President. In moving to what he thought would be the safest place, he navigated the UK towards its biggest post-1945 foreign policy disaster. Now Cameron replaces forensic strategic arguments with woolly evocations of Churchillian grandeur and taunting doubters as weak-kneed appeasers.

The doubters are merely wise enough to have doubts. They would celebrate the “destruction” of Isis with the same gusto as the most ardent military hawk. The question the doubters rightly ask is a very Blairite one: what works?

In one form or another, the West has been bombing various targets in the Middle East for years. The violence and the global risk worsen. Only two years ago, Cameron sought to win a vote on bombing targets, vaguely aimed at toppling Assad. Now he seeks a vote to bomb Isis in Syria, perhaps in some form of alliance with Russia and Assad. Not so long ago, we were told that Saddam’s WMD were the great global threat. Before that it was Afghanistan – even though US and UK troops were diverted from Kabul in order to invade Iraq, allowing the Taliban to regroup. The context is different now. There is a much wider international alliance and the protective shield of a UN resolution. There is no need this time to generate fear of a threat to the UK; there is already intense fear. But there is every need to explain how the UK adding to the bombs that have been falling for months is part of a strategic, thought-through plan that will make this country and the world a safer place.

Like Blair before him, Cameron is a leader who acts because he believes he is pursuing the right course. With lives at risk, no sane individual would do otherwise. But leaders make complex calculations in such situations. Partly, Cameron seeks to purge the humiliation of losing the Commons’ vote on bombing Syria in the last parliament. He attends international gatherings with leaders and presidents, but is not a fully-fledged war leader. Not surprisingly he wants to make up for what happened in the last parliament when he had to phone President Obama and explain why he could not take part in an attack on Assad that he had urged. Cameron’s need to show that “Britain has got its mojo back”, as George Osborne crudely put it at the weekend, is not a reason for voting to support war. There have to be clear answers to the strategic follow-through, or else the only certainty is reprisals in the UK for bombing pointlessly.

From the Commons Press Gallery, I have watched Labour MPs nodding sincerely and yet ostentatiously to Cameron’s words on bombing Syria. Like Cameron they are decent and believe UK attacks are the right move, but as I sat there I was reminded of the last parliament when Nick Clegg used to nod also sincerely as Cameron spoke about the virtues of Andrew Lansley’s NHS reforms and why public spending caused the financial crash.

Clegg was nodding towards his own political oblivion. Labour MPs who despair of Jeremy Corbyn and want to destabilise him need to think very carefully whether they have heard enough from Cameron on Syria – or whether, in supporting him, they nod too towards their political demise.