War isn’t something to take lightly. It’s hideous, people die, lives are destroyed. Politics is a serious business. It affects lives and hopes.

Its clear to me that the situation in Syria needs some serious political solution involving allies and enemies. It isn’t enough to bomb and hope that the politics falls into place and peace arrives.

So when I see the House of Commons playing simple politics with complex issues I worry. I also worry when members of the Parlimentary Labour Party stop thinking and reaching for bombs.

The Iraq war and subsequent failure to provide sound political and civil structures created the ground for ISIL to be born. The people didn’t want the war. Our politicians did. And they got it wrong.

So when  I see the political class tearing the Labour Party party apart because they want to drop some bombs on an enemy – without a political end game in sight – then I get worried.

I’m old enough to remember the Cold War.  I can remember the underlying fear of the impending nuclear war. I don’t remember NATO or a NATO member shooting down a Russian fighter. So when I see this, and no real sense that anyone knows who the sides and enemies are, how they are aligned or who is backing each side then I can’t see that we are ready for war.

So there are different views out there. Views that need to be heard and considered rather than being dismissed as some kind of political suicide.

So, please, stop the hystrionics and work out the solution to the whole problem, sort out the alliances, stop the flow of money and then have a vote.

Just don’t assume that we, the public and the membership, are clueless. We aren’t and right now we don’t seem to back another war…

I get that terrorism is a blight on humanity

I get that civil war is hideous

I get that nations have strategic concerns in the world that they need to address

All of that is complicated. Add in refugees and economic migrants and a bunch of hate and ill tolerance and a bucket of ignorance and, to me, Syria is a place to be a peacemaker and not a warmonger.

There are too many things afoot, too many views and opinions around with people who have the the weapons to make really bad things happen to get too involved without thinking clearly.

Today saw a couple of cautions aired. Turkey has shot down a Russian jet – that’s a NATO member shooting down a Russian jet…

Secondly there was a news story on the ‘Rythem of bombing in Syria’. Essentially the piece illustrated that no one is trying too hard to destroy the murdering scum in Raqqa, and certainly their action isn’t doing much to deal with a home-grown terrorist threat in the West.

I would back action in Syria under the following circumstances.

1. There is a sound and agreed plan for the aftermath.
2. There is agreement between Russia and NATO about the action to take.
3. The backers of the murdering scum are held to account.

Without that we are trying to stop a fire by throwing petrol on it…