The honourable 31 LibLabCon rebels who voted against another war in Iraq-and further developments

Yesterday, by a huge majority of 524 to 43, Britain's MPs voted in favour of military intervention in Iraq (Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond suggested intervention in Syria as well, but this would be illegal) regarding the threat of Islamic State (IS) fighters in northern Iraq. As before, the three main parties sided with each other for the most part. Shockingly, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, the Most Reverend (he is unworthy of this title in my opinion) Justin Welby, stated that 'this action is the right course of action' even when the legacy of the Iraq war shows that this is the wrong course of action to take-we need to address issues back home and how IS arose in the first place.

British and US imperialism were responsible for those recent wars of the Middle East, and it is well known they were really starting those wars to steal vast quantities of oil under the excuse of fighting for 'humanitarian reasons', which is another actual reason why those air strikes were made-reports show that IS has access to a relatively large oil cache on the Iraq-Syria border, which US air strikes are targeting.

However, alongside our good friend Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, honourable as ever, the 6 SNP MPs, 2 of Plaid Cymru's 3 MPs (one did not show up for some reason), the 3 SDLP MPs, and Respect MP George Galloway voted against military intervention. And so did 31 MPs from the 3 main parties-Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Conservative.

Here are those 31 mainstream party rebels-was your MP among them (in case you do not live in Brighton Pavilion's boundaries but still live in England)?

Diane Abbott (Labour, Hackney North & Stoke Newington)
Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)
Richard Bacon (Conservative, South Norfolk)
John Baron (Conservative, Basildon & Billericay)
Anne Begg (Labour, Aberdeen South)
Ronnie Campbell (Labour, Blyth Valley)
Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)
Katy Clark (Labour, North Ayrshire and Arran)
Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North)
Ian Davidson (Labour, Glasgow South West)
Paul Flynn (Labour, Newport West)
Gordon Henderson (Conservative, Sittingbourne & Sheppey)
Stephen Hepburn (Labour, Jarrow)
Kate Hoey (Labour, Vauxhall)
Adam Holloway (Conservative, Gravesham)
Kelvin Hopkins (Labour, Luton North)
Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)
Sian James (Labour, Swansea East)
Mark Lazarowicz (Labour, Edinburgh North & Leith)
John McDonnell (Labour, Hayes and Harlington)
Iain McKenzie (Labour, Inverclyde)
Nigel Mills (Conservative, Amber Valley)
Austin Mitchell (Labour, Great Grimsby)
Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)
George Mudie (Labour, Leeds East)
Mark Reckless (was Conservative, is now UKIP, Rochester and Strood)
Linda Riordan (Labour, Halifax)
Barry Sheerman (Labour, Huddersfield)
Dennis Skinner (Labour, Bolsover)
Graham Stringer (Labour, Blackley and Broughton)
Mike Wood (Labour, Batley & Spen)

Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, despite resigning from the shadow front bench in protest of Labour siding with the ConDems in this debate, did not actually vote against military intervention but rather formally abstained.

Incidentally, Mark Reckless, one of just six Conservative rebels in the debate (and three of them,himself included, represent constituencies in Kent, notably) has become the second Conservative MP to defect to UKIP in just a month. Like Douglas Carswell, Mr. Reckless has also resigned his seat to recontest it under his new political colours-however, Rochester and Strood has more Labour potential than Clacton did even though the Medway area where Rochester lies showed strong support for UKIP in the European elections earlier this year. Incidentally, the Rochester and Strood seat also lacked a UKIP candidate in 2010....

Alan.



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