I AM aware that this will go out on Saturday, however, I am writing this the morning after my worst night in parliament so far. And rather than write an emotional article about how the debate went, I think it important to dissect Cameron’s arguments even though the vote has been lost.

The impression Cameron has given is that we have not been attacking Daesh so far, and we have been leaving our allies to do the work for us. This is not the case. We have been engaged in bombings of Daesh in Iraq, in support of Iraqi forces, which include Shia militia and Iranian fighters. It could be argued that we should be doing that, because we have a responsibility to help the Iraqi government to expel Daesh, as we, via Blair and a Commons vote supporting war against Iraq in 2003, paved the way for Daesh’s emergence.

Currently we have eight Tornado GR4 aircraft based at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, which are used in these operations in Iraq against Daesh. These aircraft give the UK the capability to fly two sorties a day with each lasting six to eight hours. There is an expectation that the Government will attempt to double this to four sorties a day, however this will stretch our resources to the limit. The reality is that the Royal Air Force is now a shadow of its former self. The British military power in that area is not great compared to others involved. Action from the air in Syria will require some of those aircraft in Iraq to divert, effectively lowering the level of support that should be given in Iraq against Daesh. In military terms, there is no logic in dividing the small British contribution to the air war against Daesh. Ten countries are already bombing Syria and have been for months. If bombing Syria was the answer, then why is our limited air force needed at all?

Cameron’s claim that engaging modest British air power will assist the 70,000 moderates fighting Daesh on the ground is on a par with Blair’s claim of Saddam having WMD.

In Syria there is a shifting political landscape encompassing thousands of fighting forces. To beat Daesh on the ground, assisted by air power, there would have to be one command-and-control system embracing all of those 70,000; and their command and control would have to be integrated with the French, US, and British air commanders, not to forget the Russians. That is never going to happen. Julian Lewis, chairman of the Defence Committee, blasted the Government’s assertions by saying: “Where are these magical 70,000 people and if they are there fighting, how come they haven’t been able to roll back Isil/Daesh? Is it that they’re in the wrong place? Is it that they’re fighting each other? Or is it that in reality they’re not all that moderate and that there are a lot of jihadists among them?”

During the debate on Wednesday afternoon, Yasmin QureshiMP asserted that on her visit to Cairo, Amman and Beirut, the military, counter-terrorism units and politicians all said there are about 10,000-15,000 moderate fighters. The reality is that those engaged in the ground war are a mixed bag, few of them moderates in our sense of the word, and most of them engaged in fighting each other, with only the Kurds in Syria unambiguously fighting Daesh. The Kurds which our Nato allies Turkey are bombing.

We are not good at forecasting events in Syria. At the start of the civil war, the then British Ambassador to Syria, Simon Collis, said that Assad would be gone by the end of the year. That was in March 2012. Three years on he is now the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Assad is still a major force in Syria. Daesh can only be defeated by destroying its ability to sell oil, and cutting off its funding which enable it to procure weapons. As Alex Salmond said in the debate, we would be much more effective if instead of throwing money into our “fast, smart bombs”, we invested money into hiring people and developing equipment to take down their websites and dislocate the internet strategy which Daesh so successfully use.

We already have limited military forces, which will be moved away from the area in which they will be most effective. We will add nothing that the current air strikes by the 10 countries which are already bombing in Syria are achieving. We have unrealistic, illogical and questionable figures as to who our air strikes will be apparently helping.

This is far from a strong base to wage war. So why is Cameron doing it? Vainglory. Total and utter ego. The need to feel important on the world stage. The focus after Paris has shifted entirely to Syria. We hardly hear about how much territory Daesh has in Iraq, or what Iraqi ground fighters and Kurds are doing. We have not been in Syria, because Parliament, in the last session, denied Cameron a war against Assad (whom we are now going to be fighting Daesh alongside). In the desire to be seen “doing something”, Cameron and Hilary Benn have us now waving a Union Jack along with the French Tricolour and the Stars and Stripes.

Above all else, what will the human cost of these strikes be? To join the bombing campaign in the skies over Syria will only compound human suffering. Within the last two months, Russian air strikes in Syria have killed 485 civilians, including 117 children and 47 women.

Last week, citizen journalists reported five children were killed and 12 more injured in an air strike on Heten school in Raqqa. Monitoring website Airwars have analysed US coalition air strikes and found between 459 and 591 non-combatants died in their air strikes, including 100 children.

Last month US coalition air strikes on fuel trucks in Raqqa killed at least six civilians and wounded 20.

Nigel Dodds MP, representing Belfast North, spoke in favour of bombings by saying: “Our experience in Northern Ireland has taught us that no other approach can be brought to bear when facing terrorism. Terrorism must be fought, and fought with all means realistically at our disposal.” Can you imagine if we had applied the logic we are applying to Syria to Ireland during the Troubles? If in our attempt to defeat the IRA or the UDA, would we willingly launch a bombing spree on Dublin, or Omagh? Margaret Beckett, former Labour foreign secretary, said, “I invite the House to consider how we would feel, and what we would say, if what took place in Paris had happened in London and if we explicitly asked France for support and France refused.” Would we have bombed Ireland simply because we were asked to by another country? The prospect of fatality figures like those mentioned above existing in Ireland would, quite rightly, be unthinkable. Why then are they acceptable in Syria? Hilary Benn said: “I share the concerns that have been expressed this evening about potential civilian casualties. However, unlike Daesh, none of us today acts with the intent to harm civilians.” He said that because he knows there will be innocent civilian deaths. It is inescapable and for that we should be ashamed.

Our vote to launch air strikes in Syria plays right into the hands of Daesh. It allows them to call desperate people to arms. It allows them to argue that the brutal West is killing again. That we are meddling in their affairs once again. Taking the UK into Syria will produce retaliation. We know that war only serves to make martyrs for dangerous ideologies and radicalise those left to mourn them. People are living today in places in Britain who may be dead soon, victims of an atrocity, in which no doubt we shall hear the cry that came from the terrorists who destroyed people in Paris: “This is for Syria.”

Last night was a dark night for Parliament. During my time here, the House of Commons has never felt so corrupted, morally vacant and foreign as it did last night. Despite 57 of its 59 MPs opposing this move to allow the UK into Syria, Scotland is being dragged into another conflict against our will. At the end of Hilary Benn’s calling for the bombs to fall, I will never forget the noise of both some Labour and Conservative MP’s ecstatically clapping and cheering like war was some kind of football game where a goal had been scored in the last minute. The imperial mindset of the British empire is alive and well and the drums of war are beating once again.