Labour MPs were cheered as they praised Theresa May on Monday for doing “the right thing” by bombing Syria, while Jeremy Corbyn was disowned from his backbenches for turning a “blind eye” to who is responsible for gassing children.
The Labour leader was left isolated as his own MPs mocked him for criticising Mrs May for ordering airstrikes on Assad regime targets following a chemical weapons attack near Damascus.
Mr Corbyn will on Tuesday put pressure on the Government to seek the permission of MPs before future deployments of the Armed Forces after the Speaker granted his application for an emergency debate on “Parliament’s right in relation to the approval of military action by British forces overseas.”
But a defiant Mrs May made it clear that she would bomb Syria again if it used chemical weapons in future and would not feel the need to seek Parliament’s permission to do so.
On Monday it emerged that President Donald Trump favoured bombing Russian and Iranian targets in Syria using three times the firepower than was eventually deployed, before he was talked out of it by his defence secretary James Mattis.
Meanwhile GCHQ and the FBI disclosed that Russia has targeted the home internet networks of tens of thousands of British households, as well as probing the vulnerabilities of Britain’s critical infrastructure including the Armed Forces, emergency services and power grid.
Mrs May addressed Parliament for the first time since Saturday’s cruise missile strike on Assad regime targets, setting out her reasons for taking action before answering questions from 140 MPs.
The Prime Minister received overwhelming support from her own party for acting swiftly against Syria without asking for permission from the Commons, but was criticised by Mr Corbyn and a handful of Tory MPs for deciding not to recall Parliament to debate the issue last week.
Asked if she would do the same again if Syria committed further outrages, an unrepentant Mrs May said: “Nobody should be in any doubt of our resolve to ensure that we cannot see a situation where the use of chemical weapons is normalised…
“I set out the basis of which we took this decision and I recognise the importance of Parliament but it’s also important that the Government is able to act, and there will always be circumstances in which it is important to act without that debate having taken place in Parliament.”
Mr Corbyn was greeted with angry shouts of “shame!” when he told MPs: “The Prime Minister is accountable to this Parliament, not to the whims of the US President.”
He once again suggested that Mr Assad might be innocent of the chemical attack as “other groups” could have carried it out, and said the the airstrikes were “legally questionable”.
Chris Leslie, the Labour MP, took issue with Mr Corbyn’s non-interventionist stance, telling the Commons: “Intervening to save civilians from future gas attacks while not without risk was absolutely the right thing to do.
“A policy of inaction also would have severe consequences. Those who would turn a blind eye, who would do nothing in pursuit of some moral high ground, should also be held accountable for once today as well.”
Opponents of the airstrikes have used the Twitter hashtag #NotInMyName but Mike Gapes, the Labour MP, turned it against Mr Corbyn by tweeting: “Sorry to say my party is led by a man who questions Russian responsibility for Salisbury, who rejects action to stop Assad use of chemical weapons, who opposes Humanitarian intervention and gives Russia a veto on UK action #NotInMyName."
John Woodcock, a Labour MP, said on Twitter: "I wish my frontbench would spend even a fraction of the energy on Assad and Russia’s grotesque slaughter of civilians as they are on inventing new reasons to oppose targeted UK intervention to stop it."
Mr Corbyn believes Parliament should pass a war powers act to prevent ministers deploying the Armed Forces without a Commons vote, and MPs will debate the matter on Tuesday during the emergency debate granted by the Speaker.
MPs will only be able to vote on the motion that they have “considered” Parliament’s right to be consulted on military action, meaning they cannot force a change in the law, but Mr Corbyn is expected to table a future debate specifically calling for a war powers act.
John Bercow, the Speaker, humiliated Mrs May by rejecting her own application for an emergency debate on Syria. Mr Bercow also granted a separate debate on Syria which continued late into Monday night after it was requested by Alison McGovern, the Labour MP.
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, was given the biggest cheer of the day as he summed up the consequence of Mr Corbyn’s policy of refusing to agree to any military action without the backing of UN Security Council, where Russia has constantly vetoed action. He said that as a result, “any tyrant or megalomaniac intent on carrying out genocide would be able to conduct that genocide with total impunity even if it was in our power to prevent it”.
Britain has accused Syria and Russia of preventing chemical weapons inspectors from reaching the site of the suspected gas attack in Douma which triggered Western strikes on the Assad regime.
The British delegation to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said inspectors were in Damascus but still unable to visit the site where more than 70 people were killed by a suspected regime chemical attack. They are not expected to arrive in Douma until Wednesday.
A senior Russian official speaking at a press conference in The Hague said the roads were still being cleared of mines, adding: “[On Tuesday] the security services of the United Nations ... will test the routes. And on Wednesday is when we plan the arrival of the OPCW experts.”