James Forsyth James Forsyth

George Osborne: There’ll be no second Commons vote on Syria

There’ll be no second parliamentary vote on Syria, George Osborne stressed this morning. There had been speculation that following President Obama’s decision to go to Congress before using military force, meaning that strikes won’t happen before the week of the 9th of September, there could be a second parliamentary vote on UK military involvement. But Osborne scotched that idea on the Andrew Marr show this morning.

Obama’s decision, though, has eased the political pressure on David Cameron. Judging by some of the coverage this morning, he’s not a bungling leader who couldn’t get his way with his own parliament, but a statesman who has set a trend for how decisions about war and peace should be made post-Iraq.

Intriguingly, Obama seems keen to help Cameron out. When the pair spoke on Friday, there was much sympathy for the PM’s predicament from the President. He began the call with the line, ‘How are you, brother?’ The call then turned into a meeting of the leader’s union with Obama joking to Cameron, ‘You have to remember that we volunteered for these jobs.’ When you add to this the White House Oking Jim Messina, Obama’s re-election campaign manager, working on the Tories’ 2015 campaign, a pattern begins to emerge.

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