After Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to give Labour MPs a free vote over air strikes in Syria, tonight’s Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meeting was less fractious than it could have been. But one grandee was still moved to declare that the “ferocity” of the attacks on the leader made it the most “uplifting” he had attended.
Margaret Beckett, the former foreign secretary, told the meeting: “We cannot unite the party if the leader’s office is determined to divide us.” Several MPs said afterwards that many of those who shared Corbyn’s opposition to air strikes believed he had mishandled the process by appealing to MPs over the heads of the shadow cabinet and then to members. David Winnick declared that those who favoured military action faced a “shakedown” and deselection by Momentum activists. “It is completely unacceptable. They are a party within a party,” he said of the Corbyn-aligned group. The “huge applause” for Hilary Benn, who favours intervention, far outweighed that for the leader, I’m told.
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