Less than three months after his election as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn has faced his first public calls to resign from MPs in the party. As Mr Corbyn found himself at odds with most of his shadow cabinet over David Cameron’s proposal to extend Britain’s aerial bombing campaign against Islamic State into Syria, two former ministers called on the Labour leader to step aside.
After the shadow cabinet agreed on Thursday to postpone a decision on Syria until next Monday, Mr Corbyn unexpectedly released a letter to MPs saying he could not support the bombing campaign. Former Northern Ireland minister John Spellar on Friday described as “unacceptable” the party leader’s behaviour towards shadow ministers who had been blindsided by the letter.
“They thought they were going away to resume that discussion on Monday. He’s now trying to pre-empt that and whip up a storm inside the party. It is, as I say, unacceptable,” he said.
“Certainly, by the way, they should not resign. They should hold on to those places. If anyone should resign after this incident, it should be Jeremy Corbyn.”
Former home office minister Fiona Mactaggart said she shared Mr Corbyn’s doubts about bombing Syria but condemned his leadership as weak and unsustainable and said it would be a “really sensible strategy” for him to resign.
“He hasn’t got a strategy to lead the party from where it is to where it needs to be and the people of the country can see that,” she told BBC Radio Berkshire.
“I think it probably is unsustainable. The problem is that my party – and bless it, I love it deeply – doesn’t have the hunger for power that the Conservative party has.”
Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson and shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn have both said that Mr Cameron made a “compelling” case for air strikes in Syria. Both said they would not be resigning over the issue but their stance places them in direct conflict with Mr Corbyn on the biggest foreign policy decision facing Britain since 2013.
“I think there is a very strong case for us playing our full part in doing that given that we are currently flying missions, providing intelligence and refuelling to others who are participating, and I think our allies look to us, particularly the French, given the grievous blow they have suffered in Paris, and they want to feel like we are with them in solidarity and I feel like we should be,” Mr Benn said.
In his letter to MPs, Mr Corbyn said the prime minister had failed to make a convincing case that extending UK bombing to Syria would make Britain safer and that Mr Cameron did not set out a coherent strategy for defeating Islamic State, also known as Isis.
“In my view, the prime minister has been unable to explain the contribution of additional UK bombing to a comprehensive negotiated political settlement of the Syrian civil war, or its likely impact on the threat of terrorist attacks in the UK. For these and other reasons, I do not believe the prime minister’s current proposal for air strikes in Syria will protect our security and therefore cannot support it,” he said.
Some military analysts share Mr Corbyn’s misgivings and many have questioned the prime minister’s figure of 70,000 “moderate” forces opposed to both the Syrian government and Islamic State. Dianne Abbott, a shadow cabinet ally of the Labour leader said his views chime with those of the party membership, which remains overwhelmingly supportive of him.
