Labour's former shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy has spoken of his "regret" at voting against air strikes on Syria in 2013 after dictator Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people.
Mr Murphy said he now believes he should have quit his frontbench job rather than follow then leader Ed Miliband into the No voting lobby.
Prime Minister David Cameron was blocked from joining the US in launching air strikes against the Assad regime when 30 Tory rebels and nine Liberal Democrats joined Labour to defeat him in one of the most dramatic Commons votes of the coalition years.
"I should have stood down from the shadow cabinet in the hours before the vote," Mr Murphy told the New Statesman. "Of the hundreds of votes over 18 years in Parliament, 29 August 2013 was the one occasion I allowed commitment to my party to defeat my sense of right and wrong. I should have been true to myself. I will always regret not being so."
Mr Murphy - who lost his seat in May's general election - said that the action being proposed by the Government was "millions of miles" from the regime change alleged by critics and insisted it was not the case that the Commons vote indicated MPs' opposition to any use of force.
Labour had not expected to win its motion, he said. And the party had earlier tabled a proposal for UK military action under certain conditions which won 220 votes, meaning that a majority of MPs had voted for the use of force in one form or another.
"Labour voted against the Government while not expecting to win. The Government voted against Labour while not expecting to lose," said Mr Murphy.
"That night I didn't join in the customary cheers of some opposition MPs that greeted the Government's defeat. How could I? We hadn't just won a vote to protect family tax credits.
"Assad had dropped chemical weapons on schoolchildren in their playground. Parliament had contrived to do nothing about it."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel