02/12/2015 The Papers

against Islamic State targets. That is the very latest from Westminster.

Let's see how it's all going to be reported in tomorrow's papers.

Hello, and welcome to our look ahead to what the papers

With me are Beth Rigby, the media editor of the Times, and the writer

Tomorrow's front pages are dominated, as you'd expect,

by tonight's vote on airstrikes in Syria.

The Times leads with what it describes as the huge majority -

of 174 votes - that David Cameron won from MPs for his plans

The Express claims the RAF could be ready to strike

The Sun is even more specific, "Tornados at dawn," it proclaims.

The Mirror calls it "Cam's War," and reports that Labour leader

Jeremy Corbyn has accused the PM of rushing into battle.

The Telegraph carries an excerpt from Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary

Benn's Commons speech on its front page, we must "confront

The Mail looks further forward, asking the question, "After

And the Independent says the vote the is a step on the "road to

Raqqa," the unofficial capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

Well, we are going to begin with the Telegraph, which quotes what Hilary

Benn had to say. Yeah, he met the Shadow Foreign Secretary and made a

very powerful speech in the Commons -- verse Shadow Foreign Secretary.

He talks about being faced by fascists, the fact that these people

hold us and our values in content, and he gave this very powerful

speech on the floor of the house, with Jeremy Corbyn sitting next to

him, the leader of the Labour Party, who deeply disagrees with him, and

sat down to the applause of both conservatives and many on his own

band, which is very unusual in the House of Commons, to hear applause

-- bench. Interesting that even at the weekend we were talking about

whether he could get the numbers for this vote, if he would try to whip

his MPs, even a month ago that he thought he could not bring ever to

the House of Commons because he would not be able to get the

numbers. And then we end up tonight, he has landed 174 majority,

a very definite majority. And interestingly, I don't know if this

was to do with Hilary Benn's speech, but in terms of Labour Tom this

morning we were talking about 45-50 voting with the Government to vote

for air strikes, up to 67 tonight -- Labour, this morning. They have to

be seen in the context of Labour's incredibly pained history. Labour

has always seen itself as an internationalist party. And Tony

Blair, when he came into power, fortified walls in six years.

Everyone thought it was just right. It wasn't. -- Fortt five wars. --

fought. With regard to Bosnia, it led to Tony Blair to intervene in

Kosovo and Sierra Leone, then the air strikes, the original ones, in

Iraq and then Afghanistan. So far, relatively uncontroversial, then

Iraq, the dodgy dossier, all of the lies, if that is what you want to

call it, stretching the truth, Chilcott eventually will come out

with it, but pretty much everybody knows that the case was manufactured

a year beforehand. We see this in the context of public opinion and a

party that has been absolutely traumatised by that year. And then

absolutely torn asunder by what's gone on over the last several days.

Jeremy Corbyn versus the parliamentary party that has never

reconciled itself. And then here comes Hilary Benn using a sort of

refashioning, that sort of Blairite, quasi- Churchill, we have to beat

the fascist, I am getting around of applause in the House of Commons. In

some ways it has turned full circle. It is also extraordinary to see

debate -- V debate ending with the Shadow Foreign Secretary and the

Foreign Secretary both in agreement with each other -- the debate. It

was incredible and actually, it says here in the Telegraph story, Philip

Hammond called Hilary Benn's speech one of the truly great speeches in

parliamentary history. It was a very painful night for

Labour. Those on the benches were whipped and to Jeremy Corbyn would

have wanted to whip that vote but he couldn't in the end corral his party

into backing him. We saw figures on Twitter earlier that said 11 of his

shadow cabinet members voted with the government. What some of the

shadow cabinet have said to me in the run-up to this vote was that

Hillary Benn had been working very hard behind the scenes to make the

case to colleagues to support the airstrikes where Jeremy Corbyn

hadn't made that case in the same way. He went on television to make a

public appeal and direct action has been happening where MPs have

reflectively been hounded and bullied by some members and Labour

activists. Just pausing for a moment because we have been told by the

Ministry of Defence that two Tornadoes have taken off from Cyprus

but they're not saying what their destination is. It could still be

the preplanned activity in Iraq. It must be said, it is very interesting

to me in these moments, and people who have been long enough around

camera member these occasions of the parliament voting on military

action, what didn't happen two years ago with the first voting on Syria,

the government hasn't always given its consent and things have gone

wrong. Most recently, Libya and we're not even talking about the

most famous intervention in Iraq. Libya, David Cameron turns up and it

is the first phase of intervention which often seems to carry a certain

amount of public opinion along with it. That was deemed OK when it first

happened. If it hadn't happened, would there have been a massacre in

Benghazi? Out and out opponents about this military action may come

together if Daesh gets more strongly hit but then there is the question

that is already being discussed tonight, what happens in six

months? As we move through the papers, let's just stay with the

Sun. It tallies what I have just said to some extent about the

Ministry of Defence. It is clearly not going to take along now, given

the vote, before some kind of military action takes place. It is

quite interesting the way the papers have divided. The Telegraph is very

much covering the political debate in the house and the Sun, the Daily

Mail and the Times have moved into what happens next, with the

airstrikes beginning. The Daily Mail is asking what happens next. Let's

move on to the Daily Mail. It quite often takes positions that you would

think are atypical for a political viewpoint. It has been quite

sceptical of David Cameron's attempts to make the case of the

last several days. Interestingly, however, once the vote has been

declared, the results, here we just get a snippet of the leader's

comments praying for the safety and success of the RAF. They are

basically saying, now that it has happened, they will no longer

criticize but they have been criticizing up until now. We also

have people talking about the use of specialist ground forces. They have

some very specialist security forces who have been deployed in

reconnaissance missions or something. Rather than actually

having troops. The whole debate in the House of Commons, a lot of it

was about the 70,000 troops on the ground and whether they were local

forces. I think any sense that troops from the UK will be deployed

in Syria will get MPs extremely concerned. It has been hard enough

to bring the country around to airstrikes and what... Let alone

with ground troops, and I think what has been the most interesting part

of the Daily Mail's coverage is that the country is extremely divided on

airstrikes, literally split down the middle. I think that is partly why

they have taken a more nuanced position, because they are trying to

reflect both sides. It and so many papers in the road to Iraq were

fully behind it. So many journalists, so many newspaper

editors were unbelievably credulous. And again, people forget,

the first six months of the actual invasion in Iraq was extremely

successful militarily. The forces got to Baghdad incredibly quickly

and the first few months were pretty successful, toppling the statue 's.

It was only when you got to about August that things start to go wrong

and then they never found the WMDs that didn't exist. It was not only

the Daily Mail, but all of the papers at the time. I think there is

an element of papers having been learned, and hedging bets and being

more circumspect. What did you think of the debate today? I think Iraq

lurks in our minds. But the fundamental difference,, --

difference, is that the main political and parliamentary lessons

learned from Iraq, are that any action needs to be endorsed

militarily. And there is a much greater sense of transparency and

process now, which certainly wasn't the case with Iraq, whether or not

you agreed with it on principle. The Daily Mirror are obviously saying

very clearly, this is now the Prime Minister's for, they are

traditionally not a big fan of David Cameron. It goes back to Tony

Blair's wars, Pjanic on him if it goes wrong -- pin it on him. The

point of this vote is that David Cameron was very burnt when he went

to the house in 2013 and asked for airstrikes in Syria and was voted

down. I think it's sort of scarred him in some way, that defeat. So

what the government have tried to do is build a coalition across the

House. They were clear that they were not going to come back to the

commons to take a vote on this unless they had cross party

agreement and could get that vote through. He was not going to risk

another defeat. You can call it his war, he is the Prime Minister, and

ultimately he brought the vote but ultimately, this has been a cross

party decision and to the fact that 67 Labour MPs have voted for it

against the shadow of Iraq and against the wishes of their leader

makes it feel more cross party, and also the Lib Dems backed as well.

But the much more recent piece of history or present news where the

bombings in Paris, -- were. If they had not happened, this would not be

happening today. It seems terrible to say, but there would have been

something somewhere else because that just seems to be what is

happening at the moment. It would have been in Belgium or Germany, it

could have happened in Britain. Seven were foiled in 12 months

according to David Cameron. It could have happened in any major European

city but it was the catalyst for all of this and the fact that the French

were absolutely involved. That UN resolution was very important to the

Labour Party. I thought Margaret Beckett gave a very powerful speech

as well and the Daily Telegraph quote her where she said, they had

been asked to agree precisely because that is what Daesh do. She

asked how we could turn our back on the French when they asked for our

help. The Independent have called it the Road to Raaqa. They have a

strange picture. It is a picture of a demonstrator who has rolled under

a lorry. It doesn't quite capture the drama of the evening. Although

it certainly gets marks for being different. But that is the other

part of it, which we have mentioned. The extent of the

opposition. Protests are likely to be daily or very frequent all the

way through. If I had been a picture editor, I would've taken a picture

of the people physically lying down on the road outside Parliament with

all the cars being stopped but that was quite a spontaneous moment,

where these protesters basically completely blocked Parliament

Square. One other story to mention. Sadly this is the one that has been

emerging throughout the evening here. The front of the Times

features it. A photograph of one of the victims being wheeled away to to

an ambulance from California. Very strange phenomenon of the elasticity

of news on any day of the week. This would have been blanket coverage in

every single paper, but the only paper that gives that any coverage

at all in the first additions we have seen is the Times. Obama has

been on the airways in the past hour, grim faced again over another

massacre, saying this sort of gun violence has no parallel anywhere

elsewhere in the world. Every time this happens, he comes out, grim

faced, and appeals to his citizens to deal with it and it just keeps

happening. When two people died in a recent massacre in Oregon in

October. Colorado was just a few days ago. Really sad. You get the

feeling that it is his one piece of unfinished business before he goes

and he knows he is not going to make any progress. On that note, thank

you very much indeed. Coming up, the latest headlines but before that the

weather. Wright good evening. It has been

very mild across southern parts of the evening