Britain will escalate its military campaign against the IS militant group in Syria as soon as a consensus can be reached in the parliament, it’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said on Sunday.
It was reported early last week that David Cameron had scrapped plans for air strikes in Syria after an influential Tory-controlled Commons committee described his approach to the issue as “incoherent.”
But it has since emerged that a terrorist bomb was the most likely cause of the Russian plane crash in Sinai – and asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show if air strikes were now off the table, Philip Hammond said “no, not at all.”
“When we think it is the right thing to do and we are confident we have a consensus in the House of Commons to get a majority we will go back to Parliament,” he said.
However, against the backdrop of a hardline anti-war Jeremy Corbyn is now leading the main opposition Labour Party, the foreign secretary said the Labour party was “a different organisation to that which we faced before the summer,” and said even its leader Jeremy Corbyn appeared yet to have made up his mind on Syria.
“There’s an exploration process here, whether or not a majority of Labour MPs would in fact back this action,” he said.
Speaking about the Metrojet crash in Egypt itself, Hammond reiterated that “based on all the information available to us, we think it is more likely than not that it was caused by an explosive device.”
“We’re now seeing others taking similar action to us – most importantly the Russians, who are right at the heart of the investigation into the crash of their plane,” he said.