The opening of the debate over whether Britain should bomb Isis targets in Syria may have been uninspiring but it later picked up and the backbench contributions have generally been impressive. Here are 10 of the best.

Benn:
Benn’s speech was hotly anticipated, as he would be speaking in opposition to his leader, Jeremy Corbyn. He did not disappoint, and it was an electric moment.

Benn began by saying that although he would vote differently from Corbyn, he was proud to be in the same party as him. He says Corbyn is not a terrorist sympathiser, referring to remarks made by David Cameron on Tuesday “He is an honest, a principled, a decent and a good man,” he said.

Here is the final section of the speech, which was greeted by (a very unusual) round of applause in the chamber.

Mr Speaker, I hope the House will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues on this side of the house. As a party, we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility, one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road.

And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight and all of the people we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy – the means by which we will make our decision tonight – in contempt.

And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated and it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists were just one part of the international brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It’s why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice and my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion tonight.

Farron:

In a debate that has involved a lot of dry discussion about strategy and the composition of opposition forces in Syria, Farron’s speech stood out because it was unashamedly emotional and passionate.

“The spectre of the Iraq war in 2003 hangs over this house and hangs over the whole debate that we’re having in this country,” he said. The late former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy had called for intervention in Bosnia and opposed the “counterproductive and illegal” Iraq war – both principled stances, Farron said. “I am proud of Charles on both counts.”

He said his decision – the toughest he has ever made – was influenced by his experience of visiting the refugee camps on the Greek island of Lesbos.

I can give you anecdote after anecdote that would break your heart but one in particular is a seven-year-old lad being lifted from a dinghy on the beach at Lesbos and my Arabic interpreter said to me: ‘That lad has just said to his dad: “Daddy, are Isil here?”’

I cannot stand in this house and castigate the prime minister for not taking enough refugees and for Britain not standing tall as it should do in the world and opening its arms to the desperate like we have done so proudly for many, many decades and throughout our history, if we do not also do everything in our power to eradicate that which is the source of those people fleeing from that terror.

Margaret Beckett, former Labour cabinet minister

Beckett’s speech was impressive for opposite reasons; while Farron appealed to the heart, she calmly and rationally challenged the arguments against airstrikes, speaking with the authority her experience gives her.

A former Labour deputy leader, she was briefly foreign secretary at the end of Tony Blair’s time in office. Until the debate, it was not known how she was going to vote.

She insisted it was wrong to do nothing.

Some say simply that innocent people are more likely to be killed. Military action does create casualties, however much we try to minimise them. So should we on those grounds abandon action in Iraq, even though undertaken at the request of Iraq’s government and it does seem to be making a difference? Should we take no further action against Daesh, who are themselves, killing innocent people and striving to kill more every day of the week? Or should we simply leave it to others?

She said bombing could make an impact.

There are those not opposed in principle to action who doubt the efficacy of what is proposed. A coalition action that rests wholly on bombing, they say, will have little effect. Well, tell that to the Kosovans. Don’t forget, if there had been no bombing in Kosovo perhaps a million Albanian Muslim refugees would have been seeking refuge in Europe.

She also said the UN had urged states to combat Isis “by all means”.

And she said it was important to back the French.

Moreover, our French allies have asked us for such support, and 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, if we had explicitly asked France for support and France had refused.

Sir Gerald Kaufmann, Labour MP

Another Labour veteran, Kaufman struck a note of moral certainty as he explained why he was voting against expanding airstrikes into Syria.

He said Isis did not represent Islam and people were right to loathe it, but that was not the issue. Instead, the issue was what could be done to get rid of it, and he said he was not convinced by the government’s case. He said bombing would lead to the killing of innocent civilians.

The issue today is about what practical action can result in some way in damaging Daesh, in stopping their atrocities. If what the government were proposing today would in any way, not even get rid of Daesh but weaken them in a significant way ... I wouldn’t have any difficulty in voting for this motion. 

But there is absolutely no evidence of any kind that bombing Daesh, bombing Raqqa, will result in an upsurge of other people in the region to get rid of them. What it would do, it might cause some damage – it won’t undermine them. What it will undoubtedly do, despite the assurances of the prime minister, is it will kill innocent civilians.

I am not going to be a party to killing innocent civilians for what will simply be a gesture.

Alan Johnson, former Labour home secretary

Johnson was straightforward and unpretentious as he set out his reasons for voting with the government. His speech also included a sharp dig at Labour’s anti-war MPs.

The former home secretary said he backed airstrikes because he thought they would allow Britain to attack the Isis unit organising attacks abroad.

I believe Isis/Daesh poses a real and present danger to British citizens and that its dedicated external operations unit is based not in Iraq, where the RAF is already fully engaged, but in Syria. This external operations unit is responsible for killing 30 British holidaymakers on a beach in Sousse and a British rock fan who perished along with 129 others in the Paris atrocity a few weeks ago.

It is true that this unit could have moved out of Raqqa, but that is not what the intelligence services believe. In fact, just as al-Qaida needed the safe haven they created for themselves in Afghanistan to plan 9/11 and other atrocities, so [Isis] need their self-declared caliphate to finance, train, organise and recruit to their wicked cause.

He admitted it was a difficult decision and took a swipe at the Corbyn followers who have been attacking Labour MPs over this issue.

Is it a just cause, is the proposed action a last resort, is it proportionate, does it have a reasonable prospect of success, does it have broad regional support, does it have a clear legal base? I think it meets all of those criteria.

I find this decision as difficult as anyone to make, I wish I had frankly the self-righteous certitude of the finger-jabbing representatives of our new and kinder type of politics, who will no doubt soon be contacting those of us who support this motion tonight, but I believe that Isil/ Daesh has to be confronted and destroyed if we are to properly defend our country and our way of life and I believe that this motion provides the best way to achieve this objective.

Alex Salmond, former SNP leader

Salmond spoke against airstrikes with his customary force and clarity, and was more effective than Jeremy Corbyn at setting out alternatives.

He said the UK makes up 10% of the current flights in Iraq and will not make any conceivable difference in Syria, where there are “too many planes already chasing too many targets”. He said we spent 13 times as much bombing Libya as was spent on reconstruction.

He called on the government to instead focus on “interrupting and dislocating the internet strategy which they pursue”.

For one of our fast, smart bombs, we could have a whole squadron of people taking down [Isis’s] websites and stopping the communication and contaminating the minds of young people across Europe and the world. And here I very much agree with the leader of the Labour party about the interruption of the financial resources without which this evil cult could not function... Finally I would say this: we are being asked to intervene in a bloody civil war of huge complexity, we are being asked to do it without an exit strategy and no reasonable means of saying we are going to make a difference. We should not give the prime minister that permission.

John Woodcock, Labour MP

One of the most hawkish MPs on the Labour benches, Woodcock’s speech was notable for the bravery/recklessness/disloyalty (choose according to your preferences) with which he attacked his own party.

I will do everything I can to stop my party becoming essentially the cheerleader, the vanguard for a sort of angry, intolerant pacificism which sets a myriad of conditions which they know will never be met, and will ultimately say no to any military intervention. I think that some of the people on the front bench now, and the people heckling behind me, need to think very carefully about the way in which they have conducted themselves over recent weeks. And we need to do better than this to be a credible official opposition.

Shabana Mahmood, Labour MP

She said she knows how hard it is to vote in favour and against military action, and that it is impossible to say in hindsight that a decision was 100% right or 100% wrong.Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Ladywood and former shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said she will vote against the government. But her speech included a subtle rebuke to some of her anti-war colleagues, including perhaps Corbyn himself, who have suggested that they can avoid blame by voting against airstrikes.

She said she is a Sunni Muslim and that Isis is not representative of her faith. “In Isil, I am well aware that a Muslim like myself would be killed. So please believe me when I say that I do not simply want to see Isil defeated, I want them eradicated ... But I believe that the action proposed will not work.”

But, she said, that her instinct tells her that military action will not make the UK more of a threat. She concludes:

There has been some suggestion in the last day or so that when the time for apportioning blame comes, those who have voted in favour will have to step forward and there will be nowhere to hide. If you vote against, as I will, the implication is that you can avoid the blame. To those who think this way, let me say this: if only the world were that simple. There are consequences and innocent people will die through action and in-action. Whatever we do tonight we will all bear a measure of responsibility.

Jim Dowd, Labour MP

Dowd gave a pro-airstrikes speech striking for what it said about his own side but, unlike Woodcock and Johnson , he managed to berate his anti-war colleagues with jokes and good humour.

I will certainly not be voting for the amendment for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the weasel words and the sophistry it employs in saying ‘the case has not been made’. That’s the kind of thing the Liberals used to say before 2010 when they had to face up to responsibility.

He also criticised those opposing airstrikes for thinking they were morally superior.

It is almost the impression that those who say the case has not been made have a higher moral standard, a transcendent judgment superior to those who disagree with them.

Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP

Calmly, forensically and without rancour, Tyrie gave a speech explaining why he could not support the government which contained one of the most comprehensive critique’s of Cameron’s case heard all day.

Tyrie said that the west has been intervening in the Middle East for more than a decade, and it has brought down odious dictators. He said, however, that acting as a reflex is not enough. Military action can be effective, but military action without an effective strategy is “folly”, he said, and that is why he will not be supporting the government .

The ruling out of western ground forces is very significant. It tells us that, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the west appears to lack the will, and perhaps the military strength, to commit the resources that might be needed to construct a new order from the shaken kaleidoscope of Syria. As in Libya, it would be relatively easy to remove a brutal dictator from the air, and perhaps also to suppress Isil, but it would be extremely difficult to construct a regime more favourable to our long-term interests.

We do not need to look into a crystal ball to see that; we can read the book. The result of over a decade of intervention in the Middle East has been not the creation of a regional order more attuned to western values and interests, but the destruction of an existing order of dictatorships that, however odious, was at least effective in supressing the sectarian conflicts and resulting terrorism that have taken root in the middle east. Regime change in Iraq brought anarchy and terrible suffering. It has also made us less safe.

Above all, it has created the conditions for the growth of militant extremism. We should be under no illusions: today’s vote is not a small step. Once we have deployed military forces in Syria, we will be militarily, politically and morally deeply engaged in that country, and probably for many years to come. That is why the government’s description of the extension of bombing to Syria as merely an extension of what we were already doing in Iraq is misplaced. We simply have not heard enough from the government about exactly what the reconstruction will mean.

The timing of this vote has everything to do with the opportunity to secure a majority provided by the shocking attacks in Paris. Everybody feels a bond with the French, but an emotional reflex is not enough. Military action might be effective at some point, but military action without a political strategy is folly. We have yet to hear that strategy, so I cannot support the government’s motion tonight.