The Guardian view on the politics of bombing Syria: Labour at war

During the 115 years of the Labour party’s existence, every war has sparked a battle. Amid the guns of August 1914, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald dug into trenches against Arthur Henderson, who had rallied to the flag. A pacifist, George Lansbury, was leader in the 1930s, but had to go when the mood swung behind rearmament. The consequences of Korea sparked Nye Bevan’s resignation from the Attlee government, a blow from which it never recovered.

Anti-war factions within the parliamentary party opposed every military adventure, from the Falklands in 1982 to Libya in 2011. In 2013, there was mutiny on the opposite front: half a dozen bellicose members parted company with Ed Miliband and went into the lobbies to support intervening in the Syrian civil war, at a time when the idea was still to strike at President Assad rather than his enemies.

In the light of all this history, the prime minister’s push to extend British bombing into Syria was always likely to cause Labour pains. The divisive legacy of Iraq made it certain. The bulk of Labour MPs who were not on the payroll declined to back the charge to Baghdad. So large was the revolt that, despite his vast majority, Tony Blair relied on Tory votes. War became more neuralgic than ever for the party. It was slow-burning rage about the distortions of 2003 and the subsequent disasters of the occupation that would eventually propel a career outsider and anti-war campaigner to the leadership. At the same time, however, it is precisely because of Jeremy Corbyn’s long record in opposing military action of every sort that all those MPs whose instinct is cautious support for “our boys” are reluctant to be guided by him.

The result has been a collapse of collective shadow cabinet responsibility that is unprecedented, in war or peace. Sure, John Major had his Eurosceptic “bastards” to deal with, but most of the cabinet took his side. In contrast, when the Labour leader wrote to MPs on Thursday to set out his opposition to British bombing, he was enunciating a position that was out of step with most of the views that had been expressed at that day’s shadow cabinet, including most ominously those of his shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn. In sum, it looked like he was publicly declaring a personal view, enraging colleagues who expected or hoped that their leader would take the more traditional tack of thrashing out an agreed line among his team.