HAS British Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered a fatal defeat in Parliament over new anti-terror legislation that would have enabled police to hold suspected terrorists for up to three months without charge? Despite a 66-seat Labour Party majority, 40 Labour MPs ignored immense pressure from party managers and voted against the government, defeating the proposal by 31.
Though pundits suspected the motion might be defeated narrowly, no one had anticipated that the defeat would be so stunning. In order to bolster the government vote, both Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown were called back from overseas trips, the latter from a visit to Palestine and Israel.
Serious questions now hang over the future of Tony Blair, even though Downing Street said immediately that they did not take the vote as being an issue of confidence. The problem for the British premier is that he put his name squarely behind the demand that the time terror suspects could be held without charge be increased dramatically from the present 14 to 90 days. To back his case, he brought senior police officers to brief parliamentarians on what he said was their unanimously expressed need to have these new powers immediately.
In fact, as with so much else in the Blair government style, this was not entirely correct. By no means all top police officers wanted this long period of detention without trial. And herein probably lies the real reason for Blair’s defeat. The British Parliament has been here before, specifically when it was assured categorically by Blair that the country should join America in attacking Iraq because of “indisputable evidence” from British intelligence that Saddam had WMD that could be readied within 20 minutes. This lie and the subsequent inadequate public inquiries have not been forgotten.
Therefore the debate in London yesterday may have been about legal niceties — in the end legislators voted by an even bigger majority to increase the time a suspect terrorist could be held to just 28 days — but the real issue was why anyone should trust Blair again when Parliament was being asked to commit to a radical new legislation. The Iraq factor weighed heavy on the minds of MPs.
Blair and his government have grown used to winning — three consecutive elections and every single vote in the House of Commons since he came to power in 1997. Last night there was a look of bewilderment among top ministers who could have accepted a narrow defeat but had never imagined such overwhelming rejection. Since he had already announced that he would not lead Labour into a fourth general election, there were those who believed, even after this year’s election win, that Blair’s authority was damaged. Now that damage is not in doubt. The only questions are how injured he is and whether his colleagues, not least his heir apparent Gordon Brown, will support and protect him. When the war against terror was hijacked into an invasion of Iraq, Blair signed his political death warrant. Is execution now far off?
