There is a strong case for saying that Parliament was in the right. At the emergency Cabinet meeting before the debate on Thursday, only one minister, the Defra Secretary, Owen Paterson, objected forcefully to what was being proposed. He complained that there had been too little consultation with ministers, let alone with backbenchers. He warned that party members were hostile. He wanted to know what outcomes were expected from a punitive strike. He wondered why chemical weapons were wrong in a way that all the other horrible things going on in Syria were, seemingly, not. He considered that Britain did not have a dog in the Syrian fight.
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