Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary, was heard in silence in the House of Commons as he issued an impassioned plea for Britain to join airstrikes against the “fascists” of Islamic State in Syria.
Labour supporters and Tory MPs broke convention to clap and shout “more” after Benn appealed to MPs to authorise an extension of RAF airstrikes from Iraq toSyria in response to the “clear and present danger” posed by Isis.In a rousing finale to his speech, which came in the final 30 minutes of a 10-and-a-half hour debate on Syria, Benn said: “We are here faced by fascists – not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in the chamber tonight, and the people we represent.
“They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated.”
The speech was hailed by Benn’s Labour supporters as one of the most commanding speeches in the House of Commons in a generation. Allies said it had cemented his position in the shadow cabinet and would make it more difficult for Jeremy Corbyn, who said earlier in the week that Benn would be responsible for authorising the killing of innocent civilians, to sack him.
The shadow foreign secretary, the son of Corbyn’s political hero, Tony Benn, opened his speech by praising the Labour leader as an “honest, a principled, a decent and a good man” who deserved an apology from David Cameron. The prime minister had said on the eve of the vote that “Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers” would be opposing the airstrikes.
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