Live From Parliament

The argument that the exercise of democracy in London somehow enervates and boosts the amorphous conflation of people that Tony Blair calls 'The Enemy'

I do not think the word 'enervate' measn what you think it means...

Govt majority of 25.

So it looks like there will be no inquiry into the war until Blair (who couldn't even be bothered to turn up to the debate)is safely out of Number 10, and the troops come home (if they ever do).

Cretins. Let TB off the hook by about 25 votes. THAT is the sort of behaviour that loses them votes.

Yup - no enquiry.

Incredibly The Tories were prepared to agree to vote with the Government if an inquiry after troops were out was promised.
Considering that Parliament is full of lawyers/solicitors you'd think The Tories would have realised that all the Government would have to do is keep a couple of military advisors in Iraq in perpetuity, so frustrating any enquiry scheduled for after a departure of troops.

Meanwhile, after tonight's vote, Cherie Blair is fuming as she thought she'd be on a nice little earner if there was an enquiry.

Click this link to see Cherie's money making scheme.

"Click this link to see Cherie's money making scheme".

Please, please, please tell me that was a spoof.

Thanks for that Beau Bo D'Or. It cheered me up a bit.

So much for the mighty Labour back benches! - bunch of wimped-out, spineless jellies. Just putting off the day of political destruction for a little while yet, but when it comes its gonna be pitiless.

Guys guys guys. I cannot fathom the trust you place in the Parliamentary system. When will it be apearent that it's a sham. The same forces that control NuLabour are the same as those that control the Tories.

Even if an enquiry was to be held, knowing what you know today about the crooks and crims who squatting on arse polished, Westminster green leather, would you trust its outcome?

List the fucking blair rebels that voted against the war and for the need to have a debate.

Scum.

Craig Murray who spoke in Manchester (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk1T08VgwsE) said ALL the NuLabour cabinet have blood on their hands. The criminals have reaffirmed that today, as they do with all Imperialistic slaughter-thons.

Pathetic. Only 12 labour mps could be bothered to vote for an enquiry into why we went to war.

Derek@19.09, you are right about the word enervate.
"I do not think the word 'enervate' measn what you think it means..."

Cheers, it makes a change to see someone else's spelling mistakes on the front page instead of mine:)

"Incredibly The Tories were prepared to agree to vote with the Government if an inquiry after troops were out was promised."

I don't know whom I despise more; the spineless Labour backbenchers or the alleged Opposition.

Despite having backed the original invasion, the Tories have a perfect excuse (they believed the Prime Minister), but they never use it! This would allow them to nail the bastard twice, by giving them the freedom to criticise the fiasco now, and reminding him that he lied in the first place. They do know what 'opposition' means, I suppose?

BTW, I would happily pledge £10 to see Blair forced to resign, and another £10 to see him in the dock. Even Teflon must wear out eventually...

BTW2, I love that Amazon page, especially the link from the Butler report. Well done, BBD.

I do not think the word 'enervate' measn what you think it means...

Bah...what did I mean...I'm sure I had a word in mind *racks brain*. Invigorate, probably. I'll edit it. Thansk.

Anyway, the chances of the Government losing that were always zero, that's the way it is. I'm not holding my breath for Parliament to hold Blair to account.

36 signed the identical EDM last year, but only 12 voted today...

For all his bluster on TV, alleged solidarity with the anti-war cause and his horror at the events that took us into an illegal war, where is Peter Kilfoyle?

In the pocket of yonder Labour whips. Nice to know.

BTW, Beckett's "future inquiry" line today is now being called a slip of the tongue.

273 MPs voted for an enquiry. If the government genuinely believes all that stuff about sending the right message to the troops during a time of conflict, the fact that 273 MPs disagreed is a damning indictment of their inability to convincingly win the argument.

An honourable PM, faced with such an inability to create unity during a time of conflict, would resign. Chamberlain won the Norway debate by 281 to 200. He resigned two days later. (H/T to Alex Salmond for flagging that piece of info.)

But Blair, as we know all to well, is not an honourable man. In his mind, 273 MPs voting against him is a sign that "the heat has gone out of the debate" and this'll soon be being spun as a glowing endorsement of his handling of the war.

Those in the Labour Party who have been too cowardly to act, who have put party political considerations before loyalty to this country (and its soldiers), who have allowed Blair and his cabal to continue to wield power despite the catastrophic failures of their Iraq policy, will not soon be forgiven.

Improving British democracy, but "they" would not be interested. You owls know why. (edited to tidy up the post)

I believe that when people dismiss something, then they should at least try and give a suggestion as to how to improve the thing they criticise. I fiercely attack British Parliamentary 'democracy' above, and so here is my suggestion for improvement...

British Politics is anti-democratic. There is no question of that. A 22% mandate is not democratic. The British Government, despite all the lies and spin to go to war against Iraq, failed in my opinion, to convince enough people to make their war legitimate - by any description.

To improve things, here is one sugestion. It may be old but I've never come across it before. It just occured to me after reading the above posts.

Each MP, in Parliamentary votes, should carry a weightage, being measured by the percentage of the electorate in their constituency who voted for them. This means that disagreement manefesting by the electorate not initially voting for the ultimately elected MP, has political force and consequence. All constituents should have to vote even if its to nullify their ballots to foster a sense of responsibility and reduce the effects of voter apathy / political detachment.

Later, the MP could call a by-election to try and increase his weightage, and would be beneficial to the constituents who could easily assess the MP's contribution to the development of his constituency, instead of a single 5 year slog. The system would dramatically invrease the power of the electorate :) and reinvigourate (;p) the democratic process at ALL levels.

Now, after a Parlaimanetary debate, an MP's intention to vote should be published. A fixed cooling off period should ensue. Any descenting voices from the MP's intent within his constituency should be registerd by 2 letters. One to the MP, the other to an MP's commission. This letter would reduce the MP's weighage when he casts his vote. That way, there is always the possibility that the MP can be stopped from pushing his own personal viewpoint (and career advancement i.e. arse licking; especially abundant in Government and even more so in this NuLabour Government) causing an MP never to able to ignore the constant will of his electorate.

In this case, That weightage multiplied by these 273MP's could (I haven't done the maths!) have seen them outweigh those that voted for the government. If it didn't see them outweigh the govt, then at least we could be satisfied that the will of the people was better served.

What a bunch of backsliding cowards. That's it. It's going to be a very long time before I vote for this lot again. The removal of Blair will not be enough for them to get my vote; they're all as bad.

Parliament as an expression of democracy, expressing the wishes of the people through an elected chamber, is dead.

The government arguments were an absolute, and shameful joke and yet they won the vote (how many time have we seen that, year after year).

Thanks to the two main political parties, all other voices are ridiculed or drowned out. As an example, look how both Labour and Tories gang up against Lib Dems time after time. The biggest threat to the main two is a third force in politics, destroying the duopoly they have over power.

The reason for the low Labour turnout is apparently the vote was tabled by SNP/Plaid Cymru, who they have a 'dislike' of. This is hardly mature, responsible politics.

If people want to avoid electing another lawless dictator they need to look at Labour and Tories as one and the same. The Tories are just as responsible for this war as Labour and would not have done a thing different.

Next time you're deciding to vote, just remember Labour and Tories are the same. Until these two dinosaurs are made extinct we will never have a progressive democracy that serves the British people. It will always be big business and the US that comes first - and look what kind of a world that makes.

90% of party politicians have no interest in you, their constituants or this country. Don't vote for them.

The main (almost childish) agrument the government had was that an enquirey would undermine our 'boys' out there and empower the 'enemy', which is exactly what this governments policies have been doing for the last three years.

Margaret Beckett is a shameful embarressment of the highest order. She should only fell utter disgust and contempt towards herself after that display.

Party politics gone mad in the support of international organised criminals - it's quite obvious.

So the majority of the labour backbenchers think that their future in parliament is more sacred than the lives of our troops and the Iraqi people.

What scum!

The method I proposed above would prove a superb check against the party system. The party system destroys true and fair representation which is left to the mercy (or lack of it) to powerful professional lobby groups who this dreadful crop of crooks and crims seem eager to brown nose up to.

Incredibly The Tories were prepared to agree to vote with the Government if an inquiry after troops were out was promised.
Considering that Parliament is full of lawyers/solicitors you'd think The Tories would have realised that all the Government would have to do is keep a couple of military advisors in Iraq in perpetuity, so frustrating any enquiry scheduled for after a departure of troops.

That's only a problem if you think the Tories really want an enquiry. I suspect that what they really want is to generate the appearance of opposing the war without actually opposing it.

The Tories have never been against this war, and are not now. All they want is an inquirey into the 'conduct' of the war. The fact is most Tories are greater war-mongers than Labour.

Cameron would like us to all be talking about light-bulbs and recycling, what a joke when 100,000s have been dying in a war his party has been cheerleading for.

A vote for Labour or the Tories is a vote for US foriegn policy - including agressive war, torture and crimes against humanity, full stop.

A list of the 12 Labour rebels who signed the almost identically worded EDM 1088 last year, but who voted WITH the government yesterday (as opposed to sitting on their hands, whistling while looking elsewhere and absteining) can be found here.

As the author says, hypocrits.

I've got the votes edited into publicwhip. You can see both votes on one page here, which shows the Labour MPs who voted in the first, and missed the second vote. This is a normal compromise with the whips. Click on one of the votes to see the rebels.

The four "independent" inquiries into military action in Iraq the Foreign Secretary refers to are:

• The Foreign Affairs Committee - The Decision to go to war in Iraq of July 2003, which concluded that the accuracy of most of the claims in relation to Iraq's nuclear weapons programme could only be judged once the Iraq Survey Group has gained access to the relevant scientists and documentation. None of the claims turned out to be accurate, once the ISG published its final report.
• Intelligence and Security Committee - Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Intelligence and Assessments of September 2003, which was a report that "does not judge whether the decision to invade Iraq was correct".
• The Hutton Inquiry of January 2004, whose terms of reference was to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. Kelly.
• The Butler Review of July 2004, which was seen as unnecessarily restrictive by all the opposition parties because the role of politicians had been excluded from its remit.

I am sure you can agree those are all we need if we don't want anything effective.

Please can anyone help me clear this one up?

www.craigmurray.org.uk says that 33 Labour MPs signed EDM 1044 "That this House believes that there should be a select committee of seven honourable Members, being members of Her Majesty’s Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto, in the period leading up to military action in that country in March 2003 and in its aftermath."

13 of those voted for the almost identical motion in the debate; these were:

Harry Cohen (Leyton & Wanstead)
# Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North)
# Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central)
# Roger Godsiff (Birmingham Sparkbrook & Small Heath)
# Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Highgate)
# John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington)
# Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway)
# Alan Simpson (Nottingham South)
# Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South)
# Dr Gavin Strang (Edinburgh East)
# Robert Wareing (Liverpool West Derby)
# Mike Wood (Batley & Spen)
+ Clare Short (no longer a Labour MP)

The 12 hypocrites who signed the EDM but then voted AGAINST an inquiry when they had the chance to get one in the vote on the debate motion were:

Colin Challen
Ronnie Campbell
Michael Clapham
Jim Cousins
Ann Cryer
Jim Devine
Neil Gerrard
Ian Gibson
Jim McGovern
Austin Mitchell
Linda Riordan
Jon Trickett

So my question is, who were the 8 who signed the EDM and then abstained on the vote, or conveniently absnted themselves from the whole thing? These 8 have disgraced themselves as much as the 12 who voted for the govt - but in a cannier way, as they aim to stay out of the opprobrium. I understand one of them is Peter Kilfoyle, but who are the other 7?

Being a politician, being in government entirely reverses basic leadership principles. In the immoral and unethical world of the politician, it is the leadership or governing class that protect themselves first, and allow their employees to to take the fall. Civil Service, NHS workers, Army in Afghanistan or Iraq, take your pick. As long as the gravy train keeps rolling.

The abstainence or the absence of those who signed the EDM exemplfies this entire new labour illness that 22% of the electorate voted for.

Can someone please take out a full page in a national newspaper that is not yet cowed, and publish these lists. Will someone advise people to cut these lists out and advertise them by posting them up in Windows, on lamp posts! Lets name and shame!

Strategist,
34 Labour MPs signed EDM 1088 (not 1044 as you said).
On a cursory comparison, those not on either of your lists, ie those who absteined, but who signed the EDM are:

Diane Abbott
John Austin
Lyn Brown
Ronnie Campbell
Michael Caton
Colin Challen
Bill Etherington
Paul Flynn
Kate Hoey
Kelvin Hopkins
Lynne Jones
Peter Kilfoyle.

The full list of those who signed EDM 1088 can be found here

As with the Lib Dems when they forgot to vote on the anti-terror laws and lost the vote against the government by a tiny majority, these MPs need their backsides tanning via phone and email.

All MPs need having their lazy and unprincipled voting records assessed, not just Blair, to start finding some bloody accountability in politics.