The United States Department of Defence likes to give heroic-sounding titles to its operations. The one that has seen America and “partner nations” attempt to “degrade and defeat” Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria is called Operation Inherent Resolve. As of September 8, it had racked up 6,700 airstrikes.

The cost to the US, if you’re interested, is around $10 million a day. In 373 days of operations since 8 August 2014, says the punctilious defence department, $3.7 billion was turned into big bangs. By last week, the US-led coalition had struck in Iraq 4,198 times, and in Syria on 2,502 occasions. David Cameron really wants a piece of that Syrian action.

So keen is the Prime Minister, he is willing to pursue novel ways to win a Commons majority and satisfy his desire. One that springs to mind is ignoring Jeremy Corbyn entirely. Mr Cameron reckons there are enough Labour MPs ready to vote for the Tory view and Back Our Bombers before they will follow their peacenik leader.

A vote, says the Prime Minister, will depend on Parliament rather than “the views of one person”, Privy Council member of not. The cunning plan has two merits. First, it allows Mr Cameron to avoid a repeat of the humiliation he suffered in August 2013 when Ed Miliband denied him his airstrikes. Secondly, with the help of Labour MPs, it screws up Labour.

These must be MPs from that centre ground mentioned by Alistair Darling in our front-page story yesterday, the ones who will not “lurch to the left” like Mr Corbyn. Unlike the new leader and those faux lefties of the SNP, many stout centrists voted for the welfare cap. They can be relied upon, come the day, to vote for Trident renewal. Before the refugee crisis, they were the folk with the “Controls on Immigration” souvenir campaign mugs.

Where, though, is this centre ground where the bombing of Syria is concerned? Mr Cameron still maintains that dropping high explosives is part of his “comprehensive approach” to a ravaged country. He proposes bombs, humanitarian aid (delivered as far from the UK as possible) and what he terms “talks to create a transition away from the Assad regime”. This is an ambitious prospectus.

Of the 6,700 strikes on Iraq and Syria during Operation Inherent Resolve, the US has mounted 5,239. One dozen coalition countries have between them managed the rest. The UK and six other states have staged 1,340 strikes against targets in Iraq. Of these, the RAF is thought to claim 250. In Syria, meanwhile, the US has been responsible for 2,381 strikes, its partners just 121. None of this suggests that the Americans are crying out for assistance.

With just 250 strikes, the UK has contributed much less than five per cent to the coalition’s overall tally. Even while confined to Iraqi air space, that effort has depended on just eight Tornado bombers based in Cyprus. The squadron was supposed to have been disbanded in March 2014 but has been reprieved twice, with the Government denying that the UK lacks replacements. Ten Reaper drones, source of recent controversy, have helped to make up the numbers.

So for this, and for the chance of fresh targets for the RAF, Labour MPs will defend their centre ground and try to humiliate their new leader, that well-known threat – according to Mr Cameron – to national security? What Nicola Sturgeon questioningly calls the “efficacy” of UK airstrikes in Syria is one thing. Isis still occupies almost all of the territory it has seized. But there might also be little things like history, strategy and morality to consider.

The rule with precision bombing, as it is called, is familiar: if it doesn’t work, bomb some more, then demand more bombing. The same vacuous habit marks the recent history of western military interventions, liberal or otherwise. We all know the roster; we all know the results.

Why does Mr Cameron want to bomb in Syria, even if he can scrape together the aircraft and the votes? To ease America’s burden? Hardly. The RAF is close to irrelevant. To clear Isis from the territory it holds? Thirteen months into the campaign, after all those US strikes, it hasn’t worked.

Only Mr Cameron and his chums pretend to believe that any of this has anything to do with ending a humanitarian crisis or with persuading Bashar al-Assad to transition the hell away from power. The twin purpose of a few bombers over Syria is to allow the Prime Minister to boast that he, ever stalwart, is striking at terrorism, and to prepare the ground for still more involvement. In this, Mr Cameron is marching in step with Francois Hollande of France.

Which part of all this strikes sensible, centrist Labour MPs as good sense? Some might truly believe the argument put up by Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, that if you bomb in Iraq it is “logical” – bomb one, bomb all – to hit Syria. Before Mr Corbyn had the gall to get himself elected leader Labour was certainly ready to back Mr Cameron. Is this still the definition of the centre ground, given the refugee crisis? Is supporting Tories preferable to siding with Mr Corbyn, even when the Government’s argument is threadbare?

You bet. One way to claim the centre ground in modern British politics is continually to relocate the happy turf where votes are easy pickings. Mr Corbyn or the SNP hold the fairly moderate (not to say accurate) opinion that Iraq was a catastrophe, Afghanistan hellish and Libya a failure. Each is relevant, you might have thought, to the latest proposed adventure. Not so, according to the Prime Minister.

Mr Cameron calls holders of the view threats to national security. Some Labour MPs, he believes, are happy to agree. They don’t say that the Prime Minister is the one putting security at risk, that his gesture will add to the refugee crisis, or even that the UK’s token bombing will certainly cause more harm than good. The inevitable civilian casualties do not detain them. They would rather stand up for jingoism and thumb noses at their leader and party membership alike.

This is the version of the centre to which Scottish Labour must cleave, according to Mr Darling? And are welfare caps, austerity, and Trident renewal – and peerages, come to that – among the things marking out centrists from the extremists who these days keep turning up in Britain’s Parliament? Notions of left, right and centre have become strange indeed.

No wholesale Labour rebellion is contemplated, not on this occasion. Mr Cameron has his slim majority to weigh against a few opponents in his own ranks. He might need a dozen or so Labour MPs. Last week, the BBC’s Newsnight duly found 14, while the elevation of Mr Corbyn has no doubt increased their number. Bombing campaigns promising harm and no chance of “success” mark the decent centre for such people.

After all, they wouldn’t want to be mistaken for extremists.