THE Bishop of Chelmsford says he cannot support air strikes in Syria, unless there is a proper plan to deal with “what comes after the bombs”.

The Right Rev Stephen Cottrell appeared on the BBC to discuss the question, Should Britain join air strikes in Syria?

He urged caution with using air strikes and military intervention without having a proper plan in place to stop Isis.

He said: “If the military intervention is simply to crush Isis it will fail. It should be how do we defeat Isis, but how do we defeat what comes after Isis?

“I concede military intervention will be part of a plan, but I cannot support air strikes until I see the plan.

“The air strikes will crush and degrade Isis but history will repeat itself and something else will take its place.”

The panel also included broadcaster Iain Dale and columnist Owen Jones.

Elsewhere across south Essex, there was no consensus about the best way forward.

Steve Buckley, Conservative councillor at Southend Council, said air strikes were 100 per cent the way forward.

He said: “I feel air strikes are necessary now. It could be that they may have to put troops on the ground to complete the job.

After the scenes of Paris something has to be done.

“The Prime Minister has got to make sure that he gets the full support from as manyMPs as possible before he goes ahead with sending the RAF in.

“You have the French and Russians already in there. You have to look at the border between Turkey and Syria. It is very important that they look at the freedom of movement of the terrorists and try to tighten up on that.”

But the Rev Neil Paxton, of All Saints Church, Southend, was in agreement with Bishop Stephen and also feels other solutions may be necessary.

“I would support the concept that you want a fully-developed plan and in principle if air strikes were part of that plan I wouldn’t object. I wouldn’t object to airstrikes being used as part of a multi-national solution.

“There is always the danger that no solution is a final solution.

There always seems to be something to build up.

“One of the solutions could be to build up a regional force in those countries that can act on their own national defence, so that in the future there is no outside intervention or so the troops on the ground come from neighbouring countries.”