LABOUR’s motion on the war in Syria was defeated after Jeremy Corbyn told his MPs to vote it down.

Corbyn’s bizarre decision to vote against his own motion was because he wanted to make a point about the government failing to properly consider parliament rights.

MPs voted 317 votes to 256, with around 50 Labour MPs abstaining. No Tories or Democratic Unionist MPs voted against the Government, despite some Tory backbenchers including the former chancellor Ken Clarke having doubts about May’s refusal to consult parliament.

The vote came less than a day after Corbyn told his MPs to abstain on another Labour motion on Syria. What made it even more confusing was some Labour MPs were seemingly told by whips on Monday night to vote for the motion.

Corbyn said the debate itself was an “opportunity” for MPs to “discuss its rights and responsibilities in decisions on UK military intervention which is not currently codified by law and which as we have discovered in recent days cannot be guaranteed by convention alone”.

He argued the convention, established in 2003, was being “tossed aside as simply being inconvenient”.

Corbyn told the Commons: “I believe it is necessary and urgent that this House has the opportunity to discuss its rights and responsibilities in decisions on UK military intervention, which is not currently codified by law and which, as we’ve discovered in recent days, cannot be guaranteed by conventions alone.

“The Prime Minister’s actions are a clear demonstration of why Parliament must assert its authority on this subject. It is very important that the House of Commons, as one of the oldest parliaments in the world, holds the government to account. Not just on the immediate decision, but on the longer term strategy and the implications of the actions that are taken.”

May argued that needing parliament’s approval would endanger the lives of military personal and assist the enemy, by taking away the element of surprise.

“Our ability to exploit uncertainty was a critical part of the operation, and that uncertainty was also a critical part of its success. We know the Syrian regime was not aware in advance of our detailed plans. And yet if I had come here to this House to make the case for action in advance, I could not have concealed our plans and retained that uncertainty. I would quite understandably have faced questions about the legality of our action. The only way I could have reassured the House would have been to set out in advance, as I did yesterday after the event, the limited, targeted and proportionate nature of our proposed action.”

She said MPs would have wanted to know “what aircraft and weapons we were planning to use, when the operation was going to take place, how long it was going to last and what we were going to do.”

She added: “All of this would have provided invaluable information that would have put our armed forces at greater risk and greatly increased the likelihood of the regime being able to shoot down our missiles and get their chemical weapons away from our targets.

“I was not prepared to compromise their safety and the efficacy of the mission.”

Being binded to a war powers act would mean “smaller scale, timely and targeted interventions” would become “unviable”.

May accepted that it would be appropriate to ask MPs to back a long-planned war, like the Iraq War, “where the scale of the military build-up requires the movement of military assets over weeks”.

When Labour’s Karen Lee suggested Donald Trump had more say over British policy than MPs, an angry May replied: “Let no one in this House be in any doubt that neither I, nor this government, take instructions from any president or any other national government. When we act, we act in what we believe to be the national interest, that is our only concern.”

During the debate the SNP’s Stewart McDonald tackled the Prime Minister on why the government had been “selectively offering” briefings to sympathetic Labour MPs. He suggested the National Security Adviser had been briefing MPs.

May told the Glasgow MP: “My understanding is that any intelligence briefings that have been given have been given to Privy Council members of this House and all Privy Council members of this House have been invited to attend such briefings.”

Pressed further on the issue by McDonald, May added: “Briefings have been offered to all members of the House, not just privy counsellors.”