BOILING POINT
Tensions between London and Moscow erupt as Mrs May links Salisbury poisonings to crisis in Syria and Russia says Britain staged child gas atrocity
THERESA May was locked in a face-off with Vladimir Putin last night after linking the Salisbury poisonings to the Syria crisis.
Arguing for action against the Assad regime for deploying chlorine gas, she cited the nerve agent attack on the Skripals as evidence that the 100-year taboo on using chemical weapons was being eroded. And her officials released a dossier directly accusing Moscow of being behind last month’s attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
The Kremlin responded by warning against a repeat of Tony Blair’s ‘reckless military adventure’ in Iraq. The Russian military even claimed London had faked the gas attack near Damascus.
As the propaganda battle plunged
Two ministers suggested a Commons vote be held before Britain goes to war in Syria, it emerged last night.
Brexit Secretary David Davis and Esther McVey, the work and Pensions Secretary, said during Thursday’s Cabinet meeting that the Commons might need to have a say before any military action.
A Government source said Housing Secretary Sajid Javid argued strongly that action could go ahead without the approval of MPs.
The Cabinet agreed that no vote was necessary, but the debate signals the growing tensions over the issue. The source said: ‘There was no big argument about it – it was not heated. They raised it as an issue. But the majority felt differently.’
Mr Davis voted against action against Syria in 2013 when he was on the backbenches.
Mrs May is under mounting pressure from her own MPs to cancel Monday’s business in Parliament for a full-scale debate on the options.
They have demanded time for a vote – even if western forces have already struck.
‘The Government owes it to Parliament to come and explain,’ said Bob Seely, the Isle of wight Con-
‘Sceptical about intervention’
servative MP who says he is sceptical about intervention.
‘Articulating its case in a chamber full of critical voices is good for the Government. If it can’t, then maybe it shouldn’t be doing it.’
He told Sky News such a strike would be ‘gesture bombing that is going to be very dangerous’.
Tory MP John Baron said: ‘It is unclear whether military action would have any practical or chastising effect.
‘It would also underestimate the extent to which this vicious civil war is also a proxy war reflecting wider regional tensions. Very few moderates now remain in Syria.’
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, said the Government would be in difficulty if military intervention was not authorised by Parliament – and then backfired. ‘The pressure on Government to hold a debate in Government time is going to become overwhelming,’ he added.
‘It has to be reasonable and take Parliament into its confidence. Parliament can’t just be left sitting on the sidelines.’
Veteran Tory MP Ken Clarke has also demanded a debate.
Tory MPs Philip Davies, Martin Vickers and Adam Holloway, who all voted against the strikes on Assad when proposed by David Cameron in 2013, agreed.
Mr Holloway said: ‘There should be a vote once they have shown us how this fits into a proper strategy.
‘we should not be just firing off missiles to make ourselves feel better – as one friend put it, using missiles as a form of therapy. The “something must be done” feelgood approach has already cast tens of millions of people across the Middle East into unimaginable insecurity.’
The DUP, whose MPs Mrs May relies upon, have not confirmed whether they will back Mrs May.
The confidence and supply agreement the Tories struck last year did not explicitly cover military intervention.
But MP Sammy wilson, who is the party’s Treasury spokesman, said he thought there should be a Commons vote.
Although the Government is entitled under the royal prerogative to decide to go to war, since the debate on Iraq in 2003 there has been a convention that no administration would embark on military action without getting the support of Parliament.
Mr Cameron was defeated by 13 votes in 2013 and said he would respect the result. He later won approval for strikes against terrorist forces in Syria.