Let's see the colour of that one, then.
Many of the votes against the Bruce Amendment, even by some people who had signed it and even by Rob Flello who had published a Labour List article in support of it only hours earlier, do indicate that undertakings have been given. Those undertakings must now be honoured.
If the Bruce Amendment had only said "fetus" rather than "unborn child", then it would have passed with as few votes against it as there the last time that the House of Commons divided on banning gendercide. On that occasion, there was precisely one such vote.
But this is the work of the Tea Party, Fox News, Sarah Palin collection of transatlantic teenage interns that is the Stop Gendercide operation, a fully formed and fully funded apparition out of nowhere in the preposterous cause of creating a British Religious Right.
It would rather be semantically pure than win, and in any case it actively wants to lose in order to identify as many enemies as possible against whom to define itself. As a result, something has been kept legal, or at least it has not been formally and materially declared illegal, that almost everybody had wanted to make explicitly illegal.
Stop Gendercide's Twitter account is now claiming that there was a Labour Whip against the Bruce Amendment, with little or no understanding of how that system works, and on the assumption that no one else has much, if any, either. A look at the Division Lists makes that assertion so hilarious that it is almost cruel to ridicule these, after all, well-meaning children. Almost. But not quite.
Like the same-sex marriage that the Blair and Brown Governments repeatedly ruled out from the Despatch Boxes of both Houses and which Gordon Brown explicitly ruled out in the course of the 2010 General Election campaign, and like three-parent babies if they ever come to pass, this is all supposed to be Labour's fault. It doubt that they can even spell "Labour" with a letter u in it.
They are also trying to pretend, and it is possible that they even believe, that 91 is a huge majority, since in either House of the United States Congress it would be.
Oh, well. Pat Glass voted to outlaw gendercide. And I shall be voting for Pat Glass.
Yvette Cooper? TUC?
ReplyDeleteCan't whip anyone. And obviously didn't, based on who voted which way.
DeleteOf all the reasons to pray for the Telegraph to go under, the end of any nominally London-based voice for these sorts of noises off is very high on the list.
And take the Catholic Herald with it.
DeleteAs it surely would. Not that anyone in the Church would notice if that happened. It has nothing like the reach that its secular media friends think that it has. The same is true of The Tablet.
DeleteAs you said, Mr. L., they don't know what whipping is. Maybe they are not Americans, though? Maybe they are Tories, who have had no whips worthy of the name in nearly 30 years?
DeleteNow, now.
DeleteSeveral speakers in the debate, such as Fiona Mactaggart, stated openly that the Tea Party link was why they could not support a Stop Gendercide amendment.
But an ever so slightly better-drafted one will come back, and will be passed.
The Herald doesn't know the difference between the TUC and the Labour Party, public school wannabe Tea Partiers.
DeleteI know. Their daddies should demand their money back. So much for aspiration.
DeleteAs obviously you know, over half of the TUC is not, and has never been, affiliated to the Labour Party. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Labour Whip. Ask it. Or ask the Labour Whips. Either would tell you, in no uncertain terms.
But remember, it doesn't matter who is Prime Minister, or little things like that. Everything is always the fault of the Labour Party.
This was a contrived defeat. The American Religious Right insisted on losing, as part of its hilariously naive attempt to break into Britain.