Everything You Need to Know About Parliament's Debate Over Bombing Syria

Last night, Parliament, was given a chance to have its say – after the fact – about last week's bombing of Syrian chemical weapons facilities by Western allies including Britain.

The House of Commons went into full "won't somebody please think of the children???" mode, while trying to mash together the interests of the British state with the interests of saving children from chemical attacks. Which, of course, got complicated: nothing could be less clarifying than watching the moral maze of military intervention play out among Britain's political class, many of whom clearly felt that questioning British military action at all was a deeply unpatriotic thing to do.

Theresa May made her statement about why she took action: because chemical weapons use can’t be "normalised". The government is confident that Assad’s forces used chlorine and possibly a nerve agent on people in Douma, near Damascus. Jeremy Corbyn responded that the strikes were "legally questionable".

For many, the big question was why Parliament hadn’t been consulted on the bombing before it had happened. However, it’s hard to see how anything would have turned out differently. MP after MP from across the House lined up to congratulate the PM on her decision.

Largely, there was a division between MPs who thought it was great that May had launched a military intervention without consulting Parliament, and MPs who wished they had been given the opportunity to personally sign it off. British public opinion is against the strikes, while in Westminster the assumption is that if you’re questioning them you’re some sort of hippy peacenik who can’t be trusted with office.

Perhaps the most openly contemptful of his own job was Sir Desmond Swayne, Conservative, who asked, "Had the Prime Minister first sought our consent, with what detail might she have persuaded us without fundamentally compromising our intelligence-gathering capability?" Why even bother with any level of oversight whatsoever then?

Labour's Ben Bradshaw congratulated May on the intervention and urged her to "not hesitate to act again", but asked her to run it by the Commons next time. A fair few on the Labour right said the same, presumably so they could give their own rubber stamp whenever somewhere needs bombing. Sure enough, Theresa May took the compliment, then ignored the bit about coming to Parliament next time she wanted to bomb somewhere.

If the softball questions of Conservative MPs were anything to go by, the strikes were a huge exercise in virtue signalling. Time and again, a Tory would ask the Prime Minister if she agrees that the bombing had "sent a message" that chemical weapons cannot be used with impunity. This gave the PM the opportunity to give answers like, "I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that that is an important message for us to send. Our action with the US and France has sent that message, and it is an important message for this House to send, too."

Well, fine. But then Catherine McKinnel asked what ought to have been an easy question. Could the Prime Minister "explain how she and the international community intend to hold Assad and his allies fully to account in the interests of preventing further atrocities?" May was left stumbling over vague words about diplomatic pressure that ended in, "I hope that it has sent a message to others as well that the international community is resolved in not being willing to see the use of chemical weapons being normalised." They’ve sent a message and, er, that’s it. Get the message?

Some fairly specific questioning from Caroline Lucas was shut down easily enough. "Can [the PM] confirm exactly when the UK identified Him Shinsar as a chemical weapons storage facility, when it identified the chemical research facility at Barzeh as a chemical weapons research centre, when this information was reported to the OPCW [Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] and whether the UK has asked the OPCW to inspect both sites?" asked the Green MP. May shot back that a recent UN proposal to investigate Syrian chemical weapons capability was blocked by Russia, so she couldn't confirm any of those things – but what can you do?

Jeremy Corbyn’s dodgy line in anti-Imperialism doesn’t inspire much confidence, either. He said the strike was "legally questionable", before descending into what-aboutery: "Does, for example, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen entitle other countries to arrogate to themselves the right to bomb Saudi airfields or its positions in Yemen, especially given its use of banned cluster bombs and white phosphorus? Three United Nations agencies said in January that Yemen was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, so will the Prime Minister today commit to ending support to the Saudi bombing campaign and arms sales to Saudi Arabia?"

These are legitimate questions about Britain’s hypocrisy, but faced with a government insisting that its intervention will save people from horrific chemical death, he came across as a box-ticking pedant obsessed with the letter of a system of international law that Putin is pretty good at gaming.

JC was back in Parliament today, this time talking about his War Powers Act, which would limit the Prime Minister's power to launch attacks without consulting MPs first. To the Tories, it's a technical point in the face of mass death: "Children who have been gassed in Syria are not interested in process," said Conservative Tim Loughton, "they're interested in action", he added, a little weirdly. But then Karen Lee from Labour asked if it's right that MPs have "less say in British foreign policy of this country than President Trump". Based on this showing, neither is much good.

That echoed the spiciest question on Monday night, which came from Labour's Laura Smith: "Among those of us who have been trying to follow President Trump’s tweets over the past week, I cannot be the only person who has found it extremely difficult to keep track of whether he was for military action or against military action, so I wonder whether the Prime Minister can tell us at what point the President instructed her that military action would be taken."

May spat teeth as she replied, "The answer to the hon. Lady’s question is this: at no point at all. I took this decision, because I believed it was the right thing to do and it was in our national interest."

Tory Tom Tugendhat was in no doubt of that: "I can only imagine the burden on the Prime Minister’s shoulders as she took this onerous decision," he waxed. Yes, truly, Theresa May is having the toughest time in all this. Which: Okay, but how come she is so good at taking tough decisions to bomb places, and not the seemingly simple ones that involve allowing refugees into Britain? Despite numerous questions, no promises were made to accept any more refugee children into the UK – we prefer to help them at arms length, in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

The children of Syria were often invoked, but in a fairly abstract way. It was representative when Tory Richard Benyon MP asked if May agrees that "in the coming days, weeks and months, the image that we must hold in our minds is of children coughing up their lungs?" Passing reference to humanity sorted, he immediately moved on to another softball question about how democratic oversight would "not only put at risk the operation, but possibly put at risk our airmen and complicate working with our partners".

Won’t somebody please think of our partners and allies??

@SimonChilds13