LABOUR leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn told ministers yesterday that Islamic State extremists “didn’t come out of nowhere” as war drums sounded during an emergency Commons debate.

The Islington North MP confronted junior minister David Lidlington a day after Downing St publicly slapped down Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond for suggesting there would be no British air strikes on Syria.

Mr Corbyn urged that Britain should not “automatically intervene everywhere and create the problems of tomorrow.” 

But evasive Europe Minister Mr Lidlington, left in London to hold the fort for party “big guns” deployed to Scotland, pooh-poohed the idea that the rise of the brutal Islamic State (IS) is linked to the Iraq invasion and arms sales to the region.

And the minister parroted the Number 10 line that the government had not yet been “asked to take decisions about any possible military action.”

Warning bells repeatedly sounded as he evaded direct questioning in a session prompted by Tory John Baron, an ex-army captain who quit the front benches in 2003 over Iraq.

Mr Baron explained he had tabled an emergency question “given our past errors in our interventions — whether it’s going to war on a false premise in Iraq or the disastrous morphing of the Afghan mission into one of nation-building, or even Libya.”

With MPs now on a one-month break for party conference season, he said, “we must not allow Parliament to be presented with a fait accompli on our return.”

But Mr Lidlington did nothing to calm fears that Number 10 could be poised to act without MPs’ consent and sign up to bombing raids on Syria, where Britain has already spent £600 million to support rebel forces.

The scope of British involvement will become clearer next week after a Paris summit on Monday where “a detailed consideration of the part which countries can play” would take place.

“While wanting to put the matter to Parliament as rapidly as possible, it does need to have freedom to act in case of an urgent threat to the security of the UK or in case of impending human disaster,” he added.