Denis MacShane (Rotherham, Labour)

Will hon. Members forgive me if do not give way because of the time limits?

We now have a very odd position in which the Members who tabled the motion—not the amendment that was not selected—have invited Members to forget party affiliation and vote across party lines. I am fairly sure that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends will accept that invitation. I put it to Opposition parties that they consider my invitation not to indulge the Scottish National party by voting for the substantive motion, the only one before us tonight.

I agree that Iraq poses an enormous challenge and great difficulties. At times, the present Secretary of Defence in America may be to President Bush what Senator Varus was to the Emperor Augustus. I invite Mr. Johnson to interpret that bit of Roman history, but he is too busy writing articles explaining why Iran should have nuclear weapons—whether that is the official Conservative policy I do not know.

Tonight we face a serious parliamentary decision. Do hon. Members who dislike this Government and believe that the duty of Her Majesty's Opposition is simply to oppose go into the Lobby, lock, stock and barrel, with the party that opposed our intervention in Kosovo and would have left Milosevic in power, and opposed our intervention in Iraq and would have left Saddam in power—the party that has not found any tyrant or despot around the world that it is not willing to support as long as he is anti-American and anti-western?

We are combating a new axis. It is an axis of insurgency, of jihadi fundamentalism—what Joschka Fischer has called the new totalitarianism—and, of course, of terrorism. I invite some hon. Members not to join the axis of opportunism offered by the Scottish nationalists this evening.

We need a broader debate, one in which many voices can be heard in this House. I read with admiration contributions on this matter from Sir Malcolm Rifkind. I read last week in The Guardian a very good contribution from Mr. Spring. I read the wise statements of Mr. Ancram. There are people making serious contributions on the need for a whole new approach to Iraq and the middle east region.

We have scores of thousands of troops of the western democracies engaged from the shores of Lebanon to the frontier mountains of Pakistan, trying to confront a situation that tactically and strategically we have not, I accept, got right. None the less, they are there at the invitation of Governments and under the authority of the United Nations.

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