The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel And Veterans) Bill received its Second Reading in the House of Commons this evening. Around 40 Conservatives abstained.
Liberal Democrat former Cabinet Ministers voted against this Bill, as did Daniel Patrick Moynihan's protégé, John Nicolson. The Labour whip was to abstain, but even Kevan Jones and Dan Jarvis made deeply unhappy speeches about this Bill, and none of the Labour Right's many hardcore militarists broke the whip by voting in favour in it.
The 18 Labour MPs who voted against it included eight recent members of the Shadow Cabinet and nine members of the 2019 intake, three of whom have had to be sacked as Parliamentary Private Secretaries; both of those facts are telling.
The Government's huge majority means that this Bill will of course reach the Statute Book. But it is not a good Bill. This day will be rued over, and over, and over again.
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