Robin Wilton's esoterica

Great vignettes from the Anti-Terror Bill debate yesterday: 1: John Prescott greeting Chinese President Hu Jintao by grabbing him by the hand, smiling broadly and saying "We just lost a vote. We lost a vote in the Commons." President Hu, being an accomplished Chinese politician, was far too polite to react to this extraordinary self-inflicted loss of face. 2: The thought of Gordon Brown, with saintly innocence shining in his eyes, pointing out to a BBC interviewer that "it's only been six months since we won a general election". Ostensibly he was answering the question "Should Tony Blair resign over this defeat?". What a beautifully economical answer: 'how can you suggest that Tony should step down after only six months... even if that's all it's taken him to completely erode an election-winning majority?'. Mr Brown must have slept like a baby as he commuted back to Tel Aviv. 3: And today, Mr Blair still defiant in the face of defeat, remarking acidly that some of his MPs don't reflect the wishes of the population. I concede, it must sometimes be hard to reconcile the demands of the party whips, the constituency party, the constituents and, heaven help us, the MP's own conscience... Strangely, I thought that was how an elective parliamentary democracy is supposed to work, but apparently it is there to do as the Prime Minister says. It's the rest of us who are all out of step.

Yesterday was a very interesting one, for me at least, and the common theme seems to have been politics.

The excitement was tempered by the news from Jordan that there had been a series of bomb attacks in Amman, including one at the hotel I stayed in barely three months ago. I hope my friends at STS are all safe and unharmed.

Here in the UK, the Prime Minister suffered his first defeat in a vote in the Commons, over the 90-day detention plans put forward under anti-terror legislation. MPs settled for a compromise figure of 28 days, to the visible anger of Mr Blair.

The government's campaign to get this measure through has been an extraordinary one: the intervention of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to lobby overtly in favour of the proposal; the evident split between the Home Secretary's desire to find consensus and the Prime Minister's refusal to offer any compromise; the naked appeal to party political 'loyalty' on what is conventionally a cross-party, 'apolitical' topic.

And the episode I find most revealing: at 10:30 on Tuesday night, Labour whips were apparently still confident that they would win the vote. Gordon Brown (the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Tony Blair's successor-in-waiting) left for Israel where he was to meet both Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas --- two elected heads of state. By 3:30 on Wednesday morning, the Labour whips knew they were in trouble. Brown was telephoned on arrival in Israel and told to take the next plane back to London to help bolster the vote. This is an unusual step because there's a system of 'pairing' in the Commons, by which two MPs who know they will vote in opposite ways agree that both of them therefore need not actually turn up. It saves having elected representatives attend merely to go through the formality of registering two votes which cancel each other out, when they could be out doing more useful work, such as meeting with two heads of state whose relationship needs all the positive external support it can get.

Mr Brown's recall, therefore, had no practical purpose whatsoever, other than to serve the 'marketing spin' requirements of his increasingly desperate boss. It wasn't enough. The 90-day proposal went down by 322 votes to 291, with several dozen Labour MPs either abstaining or voting against the government.

Meanwhile, in the run-up to all this excitement, I had my first ever visit to the Houses of Parliament, though it was to the 'other side of the lobby': I took part in a briefing session in the House of Lords (!), where a cross-party selection of peers gathered in a committee room for a discussion of the ID Cards Bill. The event was arranged by the London School of Economics, and the Government's argument for the ID Card proposals was put by Andy Burnham, MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office. I was there to offer an industry perspective on the plans. I'll blog about that separately.

It's impossible not to be slightly awed by finding yourself in the country's 'engine of democracy', let alone when you are also expected to address a handful of Lords, Baronesses, party whips and an MP. Right at the beginning of the meeting, though, there was a priceless moment when someone's mobile phone erupted with a loud polyphonic burst... of Jimi Hendrix.

Footnote from the Irony Department: the Anti-Terror bill was being debated on the 9th of November, so my visitor's badge for the House of Commons reads "9/11") So, of course, do many of the banners being displayed today in the anti-extremist marches in Amman.

And to round off the day's political content, BBC4 was showing a re-run of the brilliant 1990 adaptation of Michael Dobbs' dark political satire, "House of Cards". Superbly written, and exquisitely acted (notably by Ian Richardson in the principal role of Sir Francis Urquhart), this was a joy to watch (again) and a great way to wind down after a long day.