JEREMY CORBYN will today call for war to be the last resort in what will be read as an attack on Tony Blair and a challenge to the UK’s special relationship with America.
His comments come just hours after a high-profile Labour MP called for his party to have a free vote on air strikes in Syria.
Mr Corbyn will explain that he wants the UK to have a “new and more independent relationship” with the rest of the world.
A relationship, he will add, “where war is a last resort”.
His comments, which will also include suggestions online polls of Labour members could help change party policy on Trident, will be seen as a riposte to the US.
Yesterday, former leadership contender Chuka Umunna, who left the shadow cabinet when Mr Corbyn was elected, said Labour MPs should put principle above party loyalties in the expected Commons vote on air strikes.
Former Labour Home Secretary Lord Reid also warned his party’s response to the terrorist threat did not look “competent or coherent”.
David Cameron has said that he will set out his plan for extending UK action from Iraq into Syria to tackle Islamic State (IS) militants within a fortnight.
The Prime Minister backs intervention but has said he will only call a Commons vote when there is a consensus for action.
Conservatives believe the attacks in Paris last Friday mean more Labour MPs are likely to back action. Mr Cameron was left humiliated in 2013 when MPs unexpectedly defeated his calls to back US airstrikes in Syria.
Mr Corbyn will make his comments in the south west of England in a speech designed to set out a direction for his leadership.On foreign policy he is expected to say: “For the past 14 years, Britain has been at the centre of a succession of disastrous wars that have brought devastation to large parts of the wider Middle East. They have increased, not diminished, the threats to our own national security in the process.”
In the wake of the Paris attacks he will also demand an end to policing cuts in England.
In a nod to attacks on his own patriotism he will ask: “What’s pro-British about ministers whose police cuts are so severe that, as senior officers have warned, they are expected to ‘reduce very significantly’ the ability to respond to a Paris-style attack?”
He will also warn that planned cuts to police numbers and capability will “pose a direct threat to the security of our own people”.
Mr Umunna said he had an “open mind” on whether military action should be broadened into Syria. But he warned that the public would not support politicians who failed to keep them safe.
In what was widely seen as a nod to Mr Corbyn’s comments that he would never use the UK’s nuclear deterrent if he was elected Prime Minister, Mr Umunna said:
“Ultimately there are people in our party who are pacifists, who would never ever sanction the use of lethal force or military intervention in any circumstances.
“I don’t share those views nor do the majority of people in the country. But we have to resolve these differences in a comradely way.”
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