Tom Peck's Sketch: Let's bomb Isis, says Cameron. We can't make matters any worse.

With Alton Towers still closed, why not get yourself over to Raqqa this Christmas? The “Raptor Pod”, the “Brimstone”, the “Reaper” and who knows what else all look highly likely to be open for business in the skies above Isis controlled Syria in a matter of weeks if not days. And if our Prime Minister is to believed, unlike at Alton Towers, the risk of severe injury is all but non-existent.

As David Cameron addressed the House of Commons to make the case for British fighter jets joining France, the US, Russia, Turkey and the rest in airstrikes against Isis, one of his more curious arguments was that it would in fact “reduce civilian casualties.” Yes, he said, Britain has “the most accurate weapons known to man.” Britain’s “Brimstone Precision Defence System” (which, like the Raptor and the Reaper, turned out not to be rollercoasters) is something that “not even the Americans have” - as the staff of medical charity field hospitals throughout Afghanistan will attest. As such, it would seem, any reluctance on Jeremy Corbyn or anyone else’s part to get bombing without delay would only make the world a more violent place.

“The risk of inaction is greater than the risk of action,” Cameron said, quoting the report of the Joint Intelligence Committee. “The UK is already in the top tier of countries ISIS is targeting.”

This would not, he said, be like Iraq, or Afghanistan, or his own mess, Libya. And crucially, unlike the case for bombing the other Assad-controlled half of the country, which he made equally persuasively two years ago, this time there would be a “transition.” This is an “Isil first strategy,” he said. No Jihadi left behind.

When Jeremy Corbyn rose to reply he had, he said, “seven questions” to ask. Eyes widened for a second in legitimate fear that the Leader of the Opposition might be about to voice the concerns of Derek from Harrogate about the peace keeping capabilities of the Free Syrian Army. But in the end all seven questions were Corbyn’s own, and some hours later the Hansard transcribers had miraculously managed to whittle them down to sixteen, and which could all be summed up thus: “How is this going to make things any better?”

The Prime Minister replied that it could not make things any worse. The Joint Intelligence Committee, the head of MI5, even Derek from Harrogate are all in agreement that “we are already at the very highest level we could be when it comes to threats from ISIL.” There is nothing we can do to make matters worse.

That, in the end, Britain is committed to a solution that cannot involve Assad, and Russia, its would be partners in the bombing are committed to the opposite, is a problem that can wait til later. The “moderate Sunnis” will sort all that out, even if there remains no real idea about how many of them there are, where they are, or as Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury, Lab) pointed out: ‘The Russians will surely continue to bomb them.” An interjection which the Conservative back benches for some reason found hilarious.

If the ghost of Blair lingered, given form by the constant talk of “lessons learned”, of “stable transition”, George W Bush made an appearance too, channeled both faultlessly and predictably by Dr Liam Strangelove Fox MP (North Somerset, Conservative). “The question is whether we confront them over there, or, increasingly, take the risk of having to confront them over here,” he warned, an unarguable strategy proven true on countless occasions, and never moreso through the success of the pursuit of imagined Islamists in Iraq in preventing four Yorkshiremen from blowing themselves up on the London underground.

Terrorists, of course, seek to terrorise, and in Susan Elan Jones (Clywd South, Labour), they have clearly claimed a victim. “The attacks that happened in Paris could easily have happened in north Wales,” she pointed out.

Fear ye not, Susan. Pay your money, ride the Raptor. It’ll be over by Christmas.