LONDON, 10 November 2005 — British Prime Minister Tony Blair suffered a humiliating defeat in the House of Commons yesterday — his first ever defeat in a parliamentary vote — when MPs defeated government proposals to allow police to hold terror suspects without charge for up to 90 days.
The provision in the Terrorism Bill which is currently going through the report stage in the House of Commons, in the end went through comfortably for the opposition who won the vote comfortably by 31 votes, 322-291.
To add insult to injury, MPs rubbed it in further for the premier when they voted for the 28 days option first proposed by Labour MP David Winnick in a compromise amendment, and which was subsequently taken on as the favored option for the two opposition parties the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
MPs voted for the 28 days option by 323 votes against 290 votes, thus making this option the most likely one to be adopted by the government barring the unlikely abandonment of the entire provision in the Terrorism Bill.
In deafening silence, the speaker announced the result of the main 90 days vote: “Order, Order. The ‘Ayes’ to the right 291; the ‘Nos’ to the left 322. The ‘Nos’ have it.” For Blair the rebellion from his own backbenchers was pretty definitive. Some 41 Labour MPs — much larger than the usual Labour rebel suspects — defied Blair to vote against the government line.
Leader of the opposition, Michael Howard of the Conservative Party, said Blair made a monumental blunder. “We all would like to see the terrorists behind bars. But you don’t have to go far from our shores to see what happens when you alienate minority communities.”
Howard was referring to the riots in Paris and warned that detaining suspects without charges or trial for three months (and effectively six months in jail terms) is totally unacceptable in a democracy.
A humbled Blair, flanked by his key ministers, maintained that although the government had lost the vote, it has won the moral argument against the fight against terrorism. He accused the opposition for being soft on terror.
Glenda Jackson, the former actress and Labour MP for Hampstead, who voted against the government stressed: “It is a triumph for common sense. If the police really do need 90 days, then they would have come up with detailed reasons and explanations why they needed the 90 days provision. If (Home Secretary) Charles Clarke had done what he promised to do earlier to come back with a reduced detention time, he would have carried the vote. But Blair wanted to show us how tough he was. It is a heinous thought that British citizens would be detained without charge for up to 90 days in this country in this day and age.”
The voting ended as dramatically as the day started. The specter of a Chancellor of Exchequer and Foreign Secretary summoned to return to London from a foreign trip, and MPs from a ruling party involved in a punch-up in the House of Commons on the eve of a crucial parliamentary vote, is unprecedented in the history of ‘the mother of parliaments’.
Yet, this is exactly what happened yesterday in Britain as MPs prepared for a crucial and defining vote on the Terrorism Bill. With the Terrorism Bill in the balance, Blair had no option but to summon Chancellor Gordon Brown to return to London minutes after landing at Tel Aviv airport on his way to a Middle East peace conference and for talks with Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Brown did not even leave the plane and had to apologize and explain to his Israeli and Palestinian hosts by telephone.
Brown had initially been excused from being absent from the crucial parliamentary vote after being “paired” with an opposition MP, whereby an MP from one party has an agreement with an MP from an opposition party for both to be absent from a Commons vote thus canceling each other’s votes out. Earlier Foreign Secretary Jack Straw cut short a visit to Moscow to return for the crucial vote.
Labour Party factions were also at it. Bob Marshall Andrews, a noted Labour rebel and MP for Medway, was involved in a punch up with Jim Dowd, Labour MP for Lewisham West, a former government whip.
