Thursday saw what some members of the press have described as a stunning defeat for Prime Minister David Cameron as his motion to go forward with supporting American action against the Syrian government was defeated.
The whole parliamentary affair has left Britain’s socialist left looking more in touch with the people and rightly raised the question of how as the left leaning Daily Mirror says, did Downing Street so badly misjudge the call for war and misread the mood of their backbenchers and the country.
The writing was clearly on the wall. Polling data showed 70% of the people opposed direct military action on Syria. Just that morning the national daily papers had been near unanimous in their proclamations that this was simply a bad idea. The left-wing Guardian had led with “Threat of Commons Revolt forces allies to delay Syria missile strike” while the right-wing Telegraph headlined “Cameron backs down on urgent Syria Strike”.
The Prime Minister should have read the wall and ‘delayed’ the vote. Unfortunately the terms Prime Minister Cameron and 'smart', from a proverbially marital sense appear together in ever decreasing amounts. It was the Mail that predicted the mutiny that was about to take place as Cameron’s motion for action was defeated 285 – 272 with 39 Conservative MP’s defecting along with 9 Liberal-Democrats.
The government immediately retreated but not without Education Secretary and future contender for the top spot Michael Gove making a fool of himself, shouting at rebel Tories “you’re a disgrace, you’re a disgrace.” Yep that’ll work for him really well when he’s trying to get their support to move up to the party leader spot later in the decade.
The problem is that, aside from the fact that intervention in Syria is a minefield that comparatively makes Iraqi involvement look like children’s sports day at a junior school; nobody has made a clear case for involvement. This in turn begs the question why? We know that both Cameron and Obama are capable of making a case so we have to believe that they don’t want to be honest, perhaps fearing the exposure of some darker motives.
Obama has made no case to America other than the vague ‘crossing the line’ reference to the use of chemical weapons. But that’s not enough for Americans! The politically in-tune aren’t sold that Obama has a strategy of value and the rest seem more pre-occupied with the transformation of Miley Cirus from Disney darling Hannah Montana into an raunchy MTV style cabaret performer.
Meanwhile Cameron has created a whole new credibility problem for himself. In standard political fare the opposition are generally able to maneuver themselves in to popularity by firing away at the unpopular side of the government’s policies. However Labour leader Ed Miliband is consistently far less popular than Cameron despite the PM’s obvious problems. Despite this Cameron has managed to cede ground to Miliband making the Leader of the Opposition look like the adult in the room.
Miliband said “Tonight shows Britain does not need cavalier leadership. Britain needs calm and measured leadership. We were right to stand up for the interests of the British people and the rule of law. We were right to treat this issue with the seriousness we did because of the significance of the decision we faced.”
UKIP leader and Euro MP Nigel Farage responded to Reuters earlier in the week confirming his belief that a decision had already been taken to strike. He said the British people are asking “Please Prime Minister can you tell us what are the aims and objectives of this mission?”
What we need to understand is what the darker motives of the Cameron-Obama- Hollande coalition are? It was this triumvirate of Britain-America-France that pushed for action in Libya, though Obama himself had to be pushed in by the women (Clinton, Powers & Rice). This resulted in a Libya that is now half controlled by terrorist factions that murdered the US Ambassador and left questions about a gun-running operation to - Syria!
Has this coalition thrown in with the Muslim Brotherhood whose prominent daughter, Huma Abedin, works for Hillary Clinton?
Did the chemical weapons in question originate in Iraq? Politicians of all stripes are right press the pause button and demand that we know more. We need to know more about who is being backed by the West and also more about why the Russians seem willing to risk an armed conflict to protect the current regime.
Britain for one is not caught up in the evolving debauchery of Miley Cirus but its people are asking the Prime Minister to please explain to us what you’re doing and why, before the death tolls and tax bills get any bigger.
