The government has scored an undeserved victory in parliament with their plans to controversially hold terror suspects without charge for an extended period of 42 days.
37 Labour MPs broke ranks to vote with the opposition parties, but it wasn’t enough as the plans were passed by 315 votes to 306– a majority of nine. It’s not the end of the story as the plans have to go through the House of Lords, where an extremely bloody battle lies ahead.
Liberty director, Shami Chakrabarti:
“Whilst disappointed [with the vote], ‘Liberty’ pays tribute to the brave parliamentarians of all stripes who held their nerve against the pressures of party politics and the terrorists’ attempts to provoke us to abandon our values. Recent years have shown how forgetting Britain’s moral compass has left our country less safe…”
Gordon Brown may have strong-armed his own MPs to support him this time, but in the long term he will still lose… either at the ballot box….or when more bombs explode in Britain.