How much does David Cameron want to go to war: a little or a lot?
I reckon it’s the latter so this is make your mind up time for Downing Street after Jeremy Corbyn smartly wrong-footed the Prime Minister.
Bombing Syria isn’t a game but the political stakes are undoubtedly raised for Cameron by the anti-war Labour leader’s demands .
Rebel Tory David Davis, a former SAS reservist, immediately backed Corbyn’s call for a two-day debate in Parliament on such a momentous decision instead of a snap judgement.
So either Cameron agrees, risking a surge in public opposition to air strikes if a resolution pencilled in for Thursday is postponed until next week, or a new front opens against a scared PM accused of rushing Britain to war.
Corbyn agreeing to give Labour MPs and the Shadow Cabinet a free vote while announcing the party is against bombing was a beleaguered leader making the best of a bad job.
He hopes Labour members will persuade wavering MPs to oppose military action after a self-selecting survey of 70,000 members discovered, predictably, most are against another war.
Because Corbyn isn’t strong enough to endure Shadow Cabinet resignations by insisting all vote No when Hilary Benn, a Shadow Foreign Secretary straining to vote Yes for bombing, isn’t the only senior lieutenant favouring military intervention.
Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson deserves credit for helping broker the free vote, holding together as best he can a clearly divided party.
If Cameron does want to go a lot, believing British bombing is the answer, the Tory leader must come up with a better strategy, clearer goals and a viable exit strategy after last week’s wishful thinking threatened to repeat the mistakes of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
Bombing is doing something but the kneejerk demand for doing something isn’t in my view adding to the tens of thousands of bombs already dropped.
Should Cameron push war to a vote, however, he’d probably win a majority when the PM’s already ruling with a notional Commons majority of 17 and Ulster’s 8 Democratic Unionist MPs are with him.
Labour’s free vote bombers are his insurance policy.