Archive for June 11th, 2008
11th June 2008
42 days and counting
Four hours to go to the 42 days vote and speculation at Westminster is rife as to who has been offered what. The DUP decision has been put back to later this afternoon - presumably to see if the cheque has cleared. The Independent speculates about a possible deal done with the Labour Left over Cuba and Monday’s vote on whether to lift EU sanctions. With George Bush in town on Sunday it will be interesting to se how Gordon Brown explains that particular chink in the special relationship. A deal has also been reportedly done with Yorkshire MPs over miners’ compensation, though details are yet to emerge. Two questions strike me as a result of this - who is leaking these stories about Brown’s round of face-to-cafe meetings, calls and horse-trading? It has been suggested to me that the source is a very prominent Blairite within the Whips’ Office who is hell-bent on under-mining Brown by portraying him as weak and unprincipled. I also hear that one former Blairite minister who has been loudly signalling his intention to vote against has said that he would have backed the proposals 100% if Blair was still PM. Even if he wins tonight, Brown is damaged beyond repair, his party riven by division and, whether they know it or not, careering down a precipice of terminal decline.
I suppose the second question is obvious: should we have traded our votes too? Well, the short answer to that is No. There are times in politics when it is is permissible to do the wrong thing for the right reason, but for my party this time was not one of them. Your liberty - as citizens of the nations of United Kingdom - is not something that we can trade. Even for £200 million.