Nick Clegg would have us all believe that he cannot “foresee any circumstances” in which the coalition government would seek a mandate for a murderous attack on Syria.

The Deputy Prime Minister has clearly not learned a lot from his three years spent cheek by jowl with the Tory leadership.

These ministerial millionaires are not used to being told they can’t have what they want, so no-one should be surprised if and when, notwithstanding the apparently settled positions of David
Cameron and George Osborne, they come back for a second bite at the bombing cherry.

London Mayor Boris Johnson confirmed his status as an all-round nasty piece of work with his insistence that the issue could be revisited were “better evidence” to emerge of chemical attacks by Assad forces in Syria.

Just as Barack Obama’s threat of serious consequences in the event of chemical agents being used was swiftly followed by opposition claims that this “red line” had been breached, it’s a pound to a penny that “better evidence,” authenticated by the military intelligence agencies that sold us Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, will come to light shortly to justify a further throw of the dice in Parliament.

Johnson is not alone in his crusade to bolster Washington’s bid to act as judge, jury and executioner.

The procession of discredited deadbeats crawling out of the woodwork to make the case for military intervention by the countries that brought us the blood-soaked chaos of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Libya should attract no credibility.

Tony Blair, Michael Howard and Malcolm Rifkind are the unacceptable face of the political elite that has done so much to alienate voters.

Paul Flynn’s description of them as a “coalition of disasters past” and “posturing petty Napoleons” sums up these bully-boy’s hangers-on who are happy to go along for the ride with the Pentagon but offer nothing to tackle the key regional contradictions — Israel’s occupation of its neighbours’ land and imperialist shoring up of a plethora of despotic kingdoms and emirates.

Blair masquerades as a “peace envoy” when his standard reaction to crises in the region is to recommend war.

Imperialist intervention lies at the heart of most problems for the countries that the British and French colonial authorities carved out of the wreckage of the Ottoman empire through the secret 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, the details of which were exposed by Russia following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

The seeds of today’s contradictions lie in British and French imperial governments’ machinations nearly a century ago.

Inter-imperialist dirty deals were kept secret from our people while the aspirations to self-determination of the nations held down by the Ottomans, especially the Kurds and Palestinians, were treated with contempt.

The “Socialist” government of Francois Hollande is intent on reasserting French influence on its former colony Syria.

And the disgraceful comments during defence questions by new Labourites Jim Murphy, Ben Bradshaw and Gisela Stuart should put Britain’s labour movement on guard that there is a minority in the Parliamentary Labour Party that remains unreconciled to the case for military non-intervention.

The warmongers are out of step with public opinion, but that alone is not enough to deter them from their task of doing another state’s dirty work.

Peace campaigners will need to remain vigilant to nip in the bud any attempt to resurrect the “humanitarian” bombing option.