By the time Jeremy Corbyn got to his feet in today’s debate on action in Syria, the House of Commons was in a fractious mood, with interventions from MPs focusing as much on the Labour party as the issue up for debate. The Labour leader did not find much support from his own side, either, with a number of pro-intervention MPs frowning and muttering as he ploughed on with his speech. Hilary Benn appeared to be grinding his teeth during much of the response.
It opened, inevitably, with a man who could quite reasonably be described as a ‘terrorist sympathiser’, given his dealings with the IRA and his ‘friends’ in Hamas, complaining about the Prime Minister’s comments last night. Those comments were ill-judged: Corbyn and John McDonnell may well deserve such a label, but they are a pair, not a ‘bunch of terrorist sympathisers’.
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