There's a hole in the floor because David Cameron dropped the ball so hard

The news is full of coverage of David Cameron's humiliating defeat in the Commons vote on whether to take military action in Syria. And with good reason, it's a huge event politically and constitutionally. I'm going to deal with the first in this post and the second in another so watch this space. I'll also deal with the actual merits or demerits of intervening in Syria later on as well.

We seem to have arrived, accidentally, at a situation where the leadership of both the Labour and Conservative parties are open to taking part in punitive action against Syria and, where a majority of MPs are likely open to this as well, yet the House of Commons has rejected the very principle of military action outright.

It's hard to decide whether to blame David Cameron or Ed Miliband more for this situation but the title of this post should give an idea of where I fall on that scale. There are two reasons for this (after the jump).



1. The decision to recall Parliament and go for an early vote was Cameron's, regardless of whether Ed Miliband changed his mind about offering Labour support or didn't actually promise support and acted as he said he would. It didn't need to be that early and once the PM knew he didn't have Labour votes he should have postponed the vote until there was more evidence.

2. After the vote, in which both the Labour and government motions were defeated, Cameron gave the result the most far reaching interpretation possible, that it had ruled out the very principle of military action rather than specifically rejecting the case the government had made on that occasion. Sunny Hundal makes the point here (point 2) that talk of Britain becoming isolationist after Iraq ignores the fact that we went into Libya two years ago which was far larger in scale than what was being proposed this time. A vote happening this week (after Parliament was scheduled to return) could have been won if the government hadn't rushed to meet the American timetable but could still have potentially been won after Thursday's defeat if such an absolutist spin had not been allowed to take hold.

There are also issues with how the Cameron team have failed in managing their party. Fraser Nelson has a nice "anatomy of an omnishambles" here but I tend to give Cameron the benefit of the doubt on this for two reasons.

1. Coalition means that a lot of the traditional carrots for keeping MPs in line (promotion mainly) are no longer as plentiful.

2. These are Tory MPs we're talking about. My favourite ever Tweet about Tory MPs was by Janan Ganesh:

Tories sincerely believe voters want to know Cameron "means it" on Europe. That's their reading. Napoleon couldn't lead this shower.
— Janan Ganesh (@JananGanesh) May 14, 2013

As local parties diminish in membership, those who remain tend to be the most extreme and these are the people who decide whether an MP is re-selected as the Tory candidate in 2015. Those in safer seats know that their local party has more influence over whether they keep their seat than the party leadership does. If promotion is no longer possible then they will aim to keep their local parties as happy as possible and that often means sticking two fingers up at the leadership's attempts to appear moderate to centrist voters.

The closeness of Thursday's vote means that it is possible that Cameron could have won it with Tory votes alone. However I suspect Cameron knew that the majority in the Commons for intervention would only be possible if it involved Labour MPs as well. This makes his failure to plan accordingly and win Labour support by delaying the vote all the more damning.

Talk of the US snubbing Britain (France is chronologically their "oldest ally") and the death of the "special relationship" is overblown and I actually suspect the domestic political implications of this to be minor. Polling (such as this) shows that intervening in Syria is deeply unpopular and I suspect that Cameron may win points for "listening" so it'll be interesting to track approval ratings over the next few weeks.