Today's Update on The Waugh Zone is Titled: JEZ’S BLACK FRIDAY

* Paul Waugh

by Paul Waugh | Politics

Late last night, Jeremy Corbyn cancelled today’s planned trip to Oldham West & Royton, citing ‘a number of necessary engagements in London’. And - shot in the dark this - I’m guessing some of those ‘necessary engagements’ may be to discuss the growing war within Labour over Syria. Thursday’s Shadow Cabinet meeting was extraordinary, but will today be even darker for the Labour leader?

That Shadow Cabinet meeting, held straight after the PM’s Syria statement, was certainly strange. I’m told Corbyn opened it by reading out a prepared text, rather than speaking normally. There followed a ‘grown up’ discussion as others set out their views, with many - including deputy leader Tom Watson - saying the PM had made a powerful case. A shadow minister tells me that one of the more surreal elements of the meeting was the way Diane Abbott mimicked Lucy Powell’s speaking style. The meeting ended abruptly with no summing up from Corbyn other than a ‘see you next week’. 

When Corbyn’s own letter to MPs emerged, several in the Shad Cab were stunned and furious at not being consulted. After Abbott had gone out publicly to express her own opposition to military action, Hilary Benn had licence to go on the BBC to declare his own personal view that Cameron had made a ‘compelling case’. Some MPs suspect the Corbyn letter was not a reaction to Benn's bold statement but part of bigger, pre-prepared plan to galvanise activists’ support ahead of the vote. Almost all of Corbyn's top team attended the Shad Cab yesterday for the first time.

If Corbyn tries to push his Shadow Cabinet into a collective position against the war on Monday, there will undoubtedly be resignations, if not a mass walkout, but few expect him to do so. Benn told Today: “I’m not going to resign because I’m doing my job as Shadow Foreign Secretary”. But on the key issue of whether there would be a free vote, Benn added: “It may be that that is where we end up”.

Benn’s role in all this has been fascinating. Few can call the Harry Potter-ish son of one of Labour’s best-loved left-wingers a Blairite neocon. In fact, as I’ve pointed out before, few realise that it was Benn who was the driving force behind Ed Miliband’s decision to oppose military action in Syria in 2013. But in recent months it’s obvious Benn has become convinced that the UK has to act on the ISIL threat.

One of the most significant events this week was not Cameron’s statement (and accompanying paper) but the security chiefs private briefing to the senior Shadow Cabinet on Wednesday night (exclusively revealed by HuffPost yesterday). I understand that the briefing - to which Corbyn allegedly turned up 15 minutes late - made crystal clear where ISIL’s command and control centres were in Syria, and how they had directed terror across Europe. Our spooks know who they are, where they are and when they are there. Benn confirmed on the Today programme that the security briefing had made the ISIL threat to the UK ‘very clear’.

Benn will say this isn’t a factor, but I wonder just how wise it was for Corbyn to oust him from the NEC during party conference? And the spat between Andrew Fisher and his niece Emily can’t have helped either.

Cameron was impressive yesterday, for once leaving behind the artifice and sounding genuinely conciliatory and frank about some of the weaknesses of bits of his case. He made clear it was not a perfect plan of action but was necessary nonetheless. That candour impressed many shadow ministers.

Corbynistas aren’t backing down however. On BBC’s Question Time last night, an increasingly confident Ken Livingstone said that Tony Blair was to blame for the 7/7 deaths. Emily Thornberry was on Today earlier as the main JezWeCan shadow frontbench representative, pointing out Cameron’s thinnest argument yesterday was his claim that 70,000 ground troops could be relied on to take on ISIL. Reports of civilian deaths from Western airstrikes in Raqqa don't help his cause either (though he says RAF weapons would eliminate that risk).

On the thorny issue of whether Corbyn would ever agree to any military action, Thornberry replied ‘no, not never’. But the man himself famously struggled with that question in the leadership campaign - but of course it didn’t do him any harm (and maybe lots of good) with the mass membership.

Meanwhile, Fiona McTaggart has broken cover and called for Corbyn to stand down. As for Oldham, allies of candidate Jim McMahon may be relieved at JC’s absence today, given UKIP’s claims that Corbyn is now ‘toxic’ on the doorstep in the by-election. Corbyn doesn’t appear on any Labour leaflets.

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* Paul Waugh is the Executive Editor, Politics, HuffPost UK.