These are the 13 MPs who voted against military action in Libya:
Conservative
John Baron, Basildon & Billericay
Labour
Graham Allen, Nottingham North
Ronnie Campbell, Blyth Valley
Jeremy Corbyn, Islington North
Barry Gardiner, Brent North
Roger Godsiff, Birmingham Hall Green
John McDonnell, Hayes & Harlington
Linda Riordan, Halifax
Dennis Skinner, Bolsover
Mike Wood, Batley & Spen
Green
Caroline Lucas, Brighton Pavilion
SDLP
Mark Durkan, Foyle
Margaret Ritchie, Down South
Good to see several of my Facebook friends.
In the course of the debate, Ronnie Campbell called for Cameron to resign if ground troops were sent in (which they will be), Dennis Skinner asked how we could know if we had won or lost and could therefore come home (already the great unanswered question about Afghanistan), and John Baron pointed out that the members of the Arab League had spent more than enough on British and other arms to be able to enforce their preferred no-fly zone for themselves. As Dick Lugar seems to be the last remaining Republican, is John Baron the last remaining Tory?
All of these points - and many, many more - will need to be made most forcefully and persistently in Parliament and elsewhere during the weeks, months, and doubtless years to come.
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90 abstentions.
ReplyDeleteYes, if I found a list of them, then it would be most interesting to examine.
ReplyDeleteSorry, only 80. But that still a hell of a lot and I suspect that it included some pretty big and/or interesting names.
ReplyDeleteSo much for all the crowing about practical unanimity.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check, but I suspect that a lot of those abstainers were on Cameron's side, and I don't mean the Lib Dems. John Redwood, for example, was slapped down by Ed Miliband for calling this a civil war instead of whatever it is that we are supposed to call this civil war.
I cannot imagine how Rory Stewart could have voted in favour after the speech that he gave. From the way that Jeffrey Donaldson was going on, I wouldn't be surprised if the DUP had abstained en bloc. And so on.
Miliband, and I write this as a strong sympathiser who wants him to become Prime Minister out of those who will be available for that office on the day after the next Election, needs to make less use of his parents and the Holocaust. Ending this, that and the other with it in order to preclude further debate is unwise in more ways than one.
At least your legislature had the chance to vote, unlike mine in America.
ReplyDeleteYou do know that being "facebook friends" with an MP means nothing more than getting standard email updates from their 20 something researcher, don't you? The kind that you regularly decry on here
ReplyDeleteDon't stop though, it's hilarious seeing you bring yourself up to your full level of pomposity over it.
Have any of these MPs signed up to the 2020 Vision?
ReplyDeleteStrit, you are only showing your own level if that is what you are used to. Oh, dear.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, ways and means, ways and means...
You have none some of these people for about as long as Strit has obviously been alive. That largely means that the answer to Anonymous' question is yes. At least one of these MPs, though apparently not a Fscebook person, will be in the social democratic, socially conservative, patriotic party once electoral reform sweeps aside the existing formations. Where will that leave Strit?
ReplyDeleteWhere indeed, James? Where, indeed? It will be a terrible shock to his system to be confronted with political parties that actually stand for anything specific, or even for anything at all. He must already be experiencing it under Ed Miliband.
ReplyDeleteOnce electoral reform does its work, then he will be in no party, and the wafting of people into parliamentary seats when they have never been politically active in their lives, as evidenced by his astonishing yet also wholly predictable statement in his previous comment, will be at a long-overdue end.
Indeed, that might very well happen even sooner. Every seat next time will be a new seat created by boundary changes, and there will be fewer of them to fill. The days of the silly Sloane boys and their silly Sloane girlfriends whom Blair and Cameron have given seats as graduation presents are well and truly numbered. Exactly which forces will end them on the Conservative side will vary by locality, but on the Labour side the only variation will be as to which union sticks in the knife by insisting on one of its own serious, grown-up figures instead.
On both sides, the wheels are already in motion. Of course, Strit cannot be expected to know that. But we can. And we do.