Not surprisingly, I have received a large number of emails from constituents about last night's vote on possible intervention by the UK in Syria. What makes them that much more effective is that they are nearly all personally written, underlining people's strongly held personal views, rather than the usual circular email campaigns instigated by lobbying groups. Having interrupted my family holiday to come back to Westminster to vote in the debate, I have had plenty of time on aeroplanes to read all the comments personally and I am grateful to all my constituents who have taken the trouble to put their case in such a balanced way.
In the event, I actually abstained in the vote on the Government motion by voting both for and against in person. As you will now have seen, the main Government motion and the Opposition amendment were both voted down. In effect though, the vote had become largely redundant and the important work had been done by those of us who had already expressed our serious objections about the Government engaging in military action at this stage. Subsequently, the Prime Minister downgraded the motion we debated to one of humanitarian intervention, specifically in response to the abhorrent use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime and that a second vote by Parliament would be required to endorse specific military action by the UK, if that became necessary.
Having changed its position several times throughout the day, I deeply regret that the Labour Party played politics shamelessly in deciding, at the last moment, to vote against the Government despite the greatly watered down resolution that we debated and substituted their own which I voted against. As such, I decided that I could not support a Government position that, despite its wording, would still be seen by most people as the green light for a precursor for military intervention at the next step, sometime soon. It was not necessary to join Mr Milliband's game-playing by voting against the motion and, as such, my abstention signalled I would not support it; but the comments and pressure that my colleagues and I had already brought was important in stopping a 'drift into military action' in its tracks and that is the important outcome
The position is now that the UK will not be part of any military intervention in Syria, unless new evidence suggests that position should change or there could be a clear threat to British interests. I hope also that this situation will cause the US to desist from some of their rather too 'gung ho' responses on military action in the past now that it will be without their major ally. I have set out my major reasons for not supporting military intervention below. I supported our intervention in Iraq and voted with the Blair Government to send in British troops. I remain of the view that it was the right decision ultimately, notwithstanding the complete shambles of the US-led follow through after the relatively swift military exercise which brought about the fall of the Saddam Government. What was disgraceful at the time was the way the Government used so called 'sexed up' intelligence in their 'dodgy dossier' to make their case. This fundamentally undermined the trust that I, and other Parliamentarians, place in the Government of the day when it comes to crucial issues of war and security when we are putting British military lives in danger. It is that whole sorry episode that has made everyone, including MPs like myself, much more sceptical when it comes to supporting British military intervention and why I was not convinced about the robustness of the intelligence in this case. In time it may prove to be the case that I was wrong to be sceptical, but judging by the evidence available to us yesterday I do not think so.
In Iraq, we were faced with a clearly hostile regime who had already invaded another sovereign country, had held British citizens hostage and threatened our interests as well as many of his own citizens. I also supported the action in Libya where there were clear objectives; there was very clear and present danger to a large population in Benghazi by a tyrant who had openly supplied arms to the IRA to kill British citizens. In Syria however, heinous though the crimes of the Assad regime have been against his own people, none of the above factors were overriding or yet proven here.
Having visited Syria twice in my role as an MP, and on the last occasion met and had discussions with President Assad some four years ago, I have a particular reason for following the Syria situation closely. Despite my knowledge of the country, each time I came away still largely ignorant of who actually runs this very complicated country as it is clearly not just the British trained and accidental President Bashir Assad. As such, it is even more essential that a military intervention has a clear objective and end game and is workable and, above all, we know who we are pitting ourselves against and for. Again, I have to say that this was not the case with the evidence available in the debate.
It was not clear whether launching missiles at strategic chemical weapon sites would work, not least given the opportunity the Syrian Government has now had to move them. Nor was it clear what the reaction of the Syrians would be against British and other interests, or how the rebels would be affected. Indeed, there is also great confusion as to who the rebels actually are and whether we could simply be helping to replace one evil dictator with another more hard-line Islamic extremist one. I also do not believe the diplomatic offensives have nearly run their course and intransigent and unhelpful though the position of the Russians and Chinese continues to be, blocking action by the UN, much more needs to be done to square their position diplomatically before risking simply drawing them into taking a contrary superpower role with all the military implications that may have.
Finally, if you start military action, even under the guise of retribution for a heinous act of chemical warfare, you need to be clear about what can and will be achieved. Simply firing off missiles in order to show that certain Western countries will not tolerate such behaviour is unlikely to be an end in itself, and risks unpredictable escalation of an already highly confused and potentially lethal situation.
I hope, therefore, that you can see from the comments why I remain unconvinced about the merits of anything that could set the UK on a course that risks drifting into military intervention. That in no way diminishes my abhorrence at the indiscriminate slaughter that has been destroying Syria over so many months before chemical weapons became the most topical aspect of this tragic civil conflict. That is not to say that the situation will not change fundamentally and there may be a clear imperative for the UK to become involved militarily in some way in the future but, as the Prime Minister has made it clear, that would only happen with a further vote in the House of Commons at which point I would again make my reasoning clear.