Tom Peck's Sketch: Stop the war? Hey, let’s start two more

That Jeremy Corbyn's party has now formed its very own Start The War coalition is unfortunate

Jeremy Corbyn in 2012, speaking at Stop the War coalition's 11th anniversary protest against the war in Afghanistan calling for troops to be brought home by Christmas (Corbis)

Jeremy Corbyn gave up his job as chairman of the Stop The War coalition to lead the Labour Party. It is neither in keeping with the spirit, nor the letter, of that organisation that the first time he should find himself in a position actually to stop a war, he should instead conspire to start not one but two.

It’s not all his fault. That his party has now formed its very own Start The War coalition is unfortunate, and a long day in Westminster confirmed they do not wish to broker anything that looks like a peace settlement.

The day began as so many now do, with the uneasy spectacle of Diane Abbott dancing on the head of a pin for the entertainment of Today programme listeners.

“We are a party of government and a party of government has to have a position on matters of peace and war,” said Mr Corbyn’s official unofficial spokesperson, conceivably with a straight face. “The problem about a free vote is that it hands victory to Cameron over air strikes.”

Six and a half hours later a free vote was, of course, duly announced.

The Labour leader is certainly not alone in his view that British missiles striking Isis from the air may not quieten the complexities of the Syrian conflict, even if his reluctant granting to his MPs of a free vote will now almost certainly lead to precisely that course of action. But the civil war that engulfs Labour as a direct result makes Syria look simple by comparison.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has now given his MPs a free vote on the proposed air strikes (Reuters)

This most recent battle had begun at lunchtime. Having set up camp directly between the corridor that leads to Jeremy Corbyn’s office, and the parliamentary estate’s finest subsidised canteen, the TV cameras were unlikely to miss the leader of Labour’s Start The War Coalition, Tom Watson, as he led the march to a Shadow Cabinet meeting that potentially held power over the question of war and peace.

As the meeting began, Labour published the results of its highly scientific poll, in which it had invited members to email in their views on Syrian intervention, which shockingly they were against, to the tune of 75,000 emails to 11,000. Not long later, it would emerge that around 100 of them had actually been read. The two-hour meeting’s “conclusion” – that a free vote had been granted, was leaked four minutes after it began.

Two hours later, with the meeting’s exit route now lined by three-quarters of the Westminster press corps, Labour’s big beasts melted away. Some climbed up trees. Others dug themselves into the earth. Chris Bryant rushed past claiming: “I must get to the refurbishments committee.”

The eagles did not land. A joint mission on the part of the Start The War sisters to get to the bottom a short flight of stairs had to be aborted three steps down, when the sudden glare of the impromptu television lights engendered a rare, literal political U-turn, and they headed straight back up them in the direction of the back gate.

We can but hope that the two-day debate Mr Corbyn has requested on the issue is in no way related to the 75,000 emails he claims to have received on the subject. One thing we do know is that Labour’s leader will stand at the despatch box and make the case for Britain not to join in. And then its shadow Foreign Secretary, Hilary Benn, will make the opposite case.

“It’s certainly unusual,” was how a senior Corbyn source described it. It is tempting to call it the finest shambles of his leadership thus far, which will at least be true until the next time Diane Abbott is back on the radio.