Politics

[mrph]

Full list of Labour rebels. Special mention to Bob Marshall-Andrews and ex-minister Frank Dobson.

I was sure Blair would - somehow - get that clause through. I'm immensely glad that he didn't.

Comments

[jorune.livejournal.com]

What interested me about this episode was the effort the whips/spin meisters went to before the vote occurred. I happened to be watching the 'Daily Politics' show with Adam on BBC2, this was by chance not design.

All the pundits and analysts said 'It's too close to call, We don't know', they even called in a political betting guru to illustrate the uncertainty the media faced.

If the govt had been within 1-4 votes of winning then I could have understand the whips approach but to lose so convincingly indicates that the spin has really failed this time or that the rebels were playing their own game of spin and made this loss that bit more surprising.