Our Night In Shining Armour

Tonight's Labour rebellion was never going to be as large as the DUP's Commons contingent, so the Government was always going to be defeated even if every Conservative MP had voted with it.

To that extent, potential Conservative rebels may as well stay at home, and they certainly must not be permitted to take much or all of the credit. What comes next must not be down to them, especially since they will certainly support the Government on a Confidence Motion, as well they should, since that is the bottom line requirement of being a Conservative MP. 

Also bear in mind that while Wales and the North revolted against 40 years of economic and political dispossession by voting against the EU, equally dispossessed parts of London did so by voting against Boris Johnson, of whom they had already endured eight years.

Let us not be churlish, however. All of us whose political positions are embodied by the MPs who are going to vote against the Government are used to losing, and we know how to cope with it. But tonight, we are going to win, and we are going to win big. 

We are going to win only because of leadership that could never have come from anywhere except deep on the Old Left. But are all going to win. The people who are going to lose, however, are used to winning, and they are going to take defeat very badly indeed. None of their recent experiences of it have made them any more used to it, nor has any of those stung as much as this will.

Not the election and reelection of Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party. Not the need to fix the nomination process in order to stop the real winner, Bernie Sanders, from being the Democratic nominee. Not the nomination of Donald Trump. Not Trump's defeat of Hillary Clinton. Not the loss of the EU referendum. Not Theresa May's loss of her overall majority because of Corbyn. Not the fall of Angela Merkel. Not the travails of Emmanuel Macron.

All of those have been unpleasant. But none of them has hurt as much as this will. The CBI is used to winning. The Daily Mail is used to winning. The Labour MPs who will vote against the Government tonight, but who no more really want it to lose than, so long as they kept their own seats, they wanted the Conservative Party to lose the last three General Elections, are used to winning. The Guardian, the house journal of those MPs, is used to winning. And so on.

Well, tonight, we are the ones who are going to win. The Government would then defeat a Motion of No Confidence, but having to crow about that is a sign of having fallen very far indeed. And even if it is not until 2022, there does have to be another General Election eventually.

Regardless of who led any party, but simply because, thanks to Corbyn, this is what Britain now looks like, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.