Thursday, November 10, 2005
Strange bedfellows
The consequences of the Government's defeat on the Anti-Terrorism Bill yesterday are still not clear, particularly with regards to the future of the Prime Minister. It is possible that he will soldier on but the indications are that things are not going to get any easier for him and that in the case of some of his planned reforms on education he will need to rely on Tory votes to get them passed.
I had a look at the list of the 49 Labour MPs who voted against the Government and was surprised to see that it only contained three from Wales - Cardiff North MP, Julie Morgan; Newport West MP, Paul Flynn; and my own MP in Swansea East, Sian James. I was surprised to see that arch-rebel Martin Caton, the MP for Gower, was not amongst them but found him eventually amongst the list of MPs who did not vote. An indication of how badly Tony Blair has done in making his case for the 90 day detention period was that amongst those in the No lobby was that notorious anti-terrorist MP, Ian Paisley. If the Prime Minister could not convince Ian Paisley to vote with him on this issue then maybe he should resign.
I had a look at the list of the 49 Labour MPs who voted against the Government and was surprised to see that it only contained three from Wales - Cardiff North MP, Julie Morgan; Newport West MP, Paul Flynn; and my own MP in Swansea East, Sian James. I was surprised to see that arch-rebel Martin Caton, the MP for Gower, was not amongst them but found him eventually amongst the list of MPs who did not vote. An indication of how badly Tony Blair has done in making his case for the 90 day detention period was that amongst those in the No lobby was that notorious anti-terrorist MP, Ian Paisley. If the Prime Minister could not convince Ian Paisley to vote with him on this issue then maybe he should resign.
