Ed Miliband pledged his “full support” for the prime minister’s efforts to defeat Islamic State (Isis), in the strongest signal to date of an emerging cross- party consensus on air strikes.
The Labour leader sought to overturn suggestions that he was a “peace- nik”, adopting a different tone from his intervention over Syria last year, where his decision not to back the government over airstrikes effectively halted the British and US march to bombing.
He condemned the “murderous behaviour” by Isis against anyone who does not agree with their “vile ideology”. “I agree with the prime minister: events like this must strengthen, not weaken, our resolve to defeat them and he can be assured of our full support in standing firm against them,” he told MPs.
His spokesman said that Labour would not stand idly by — it had supported airstrikes in the past “and we never rule anything out”.
Nick Clegg also seemed to signal a change in tone, two weeks after Liberal Democrat sources suggested it was highly unlikely to see a situation in which Britain might join in action.
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He stressed that Britain would work very closely with the Americans and others to bring humanitarian relief, adding that at the moment there was no request to Britain to take military action. He added: “But of course we will continue to have discussions internationally, this is not something which is going to be solved by Britain on its own, or even by America, with all its might, on its own. This is something where we need to work as an international community to make sure that we do everything we can to stop the advance of this hateful movement, [Isis].”
One potential coalition division could be over the role of parliament. On Monday, David Cameron said that he could initiate military action without approval from MPs if it was in the national interest. Mr Clegg suggested he did not support this, except in exceptional circumstances.
He told the BBC: “I can’t stress enough, I’ve long believed that . . . what is now convention that parliament should have the say over whether British military forces are engaged in military action . . . I think that convention is a very, very important one; not least, of course, in a post-Iraq environment where the public are much more sceptical and much more worried about military engagements than in the past.”