Hilary Benn’s Syria speech was passionate, spellbinding – and historic

After 10 reasonably dismal hours, Hilary Benn has just given a truly historic speech in the House of Commons. (Here’s the full text.) The Shadow Foreign Secretary garnered loud applause and an emotional waving of order papers from members across the house. His colleagues tell me he wrote much of it while sitting on the frontbench in the Commons during the debate.

Benn made the only truly spellbinding argument in the whole of this largely unimpressive debate.