Uk politics

Defence Questions this afternoon was, as you might expect, a rather chippy affair. It seemed that whenever Philip Hammond rose to answer a question, he answered it by reminding the Labour MP asking it of their party’s decision to oppose the government’s motion on Syria. Nowhere was this more the case than in the Defence Secretary’s exchange with Jim Murphy, where both men set out some interesting wriggle room in their party positions on a second vote. listen to ‘Hammond: ‘Circumstances would have to change very significantly’ before MPs get another vote on military action in Syria’ on Audioboo

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. listen to ‘Osborne – No second Syria vote’ on Audioboo 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

After the special relationship was found still breathing this afternoon, is there a chance UK involvement in Syria action might have life in it yet? If Congress does not debate and vote on action until 9 September, there is time for the UN weapons inspectors to report and the UN Security Council to vote. This assumes Congress does approve action (and Obama said he was confident he would get the support, hopefully based on better intelligence than that which led Cameron to be equally confident at the start of this week). But if all of those conditions are met, would the Labour party support action? If they would – and

David Cameron and Barack Obama spoke this evening about their special relationship. Normally when people start talking a lot about their relationships in public, it’s because something is wrong (or they’ve just started out and like to hold loud and impressive conversations about whether to cook the salmon or the homemade ravioli in front of as many people as possible). So the fact that the importance of the special relationship was not just raised in the call, but included in the Number 10 readout suggests the pair were calling in the marriage counsellors. A No 10 spokesperson said: ‘The President stressed his appreciation of his strong friendship with the Prime