A Significant Setback

It is looking distinctly as though British Prime Minister Tony Blair may be in a fair degree of trouble, electorally, in light of his personally-favoured Terrorism Bill being officially defeated by a series of votes in the British Parliament that have taken place over the past few days. The highly controversial piece of legislation was voted against not only by MPs in the opposition to the government, but also by a significant number of members of Blair's own Labour Party. This denotes a growing degree of disagreement within the party that may eventually lead to Blair's prime ministerial downfall before Britain's next general election, which will take place in 2008 or 2009.

The legislation, which many MPs and citizens of Britain alike often chose to cite as "draconian," would have allowed terror suspects to be held without charge for up to ninety days; that is certainly substantial in comparison to the original time limit of fourteen days. After the bill was defeated by a clearer-than-expected majority of the votes, a Labour Party backbench MP proposed a less severe, but nonetheless significant increase in the amount of time that suspects could be held to twenty-eight days. That decidedly softer measure was passed with roughly the same majority, asserting that Britain's members of Parliament are possibly fence-sitters; they do not want to impose legislation deemed "draconian" upon the people, but neither do they want to be too complacent.

Blair is still convinced that the MPs who voted against the original Terrorism Bill have made a wrong decision, as the BBC reports, and is wary that they may come to regret their decision in the future if a major event of a negative nature were to occur. However, Blair's loss of support could be, to a degree, reflective of the fact that the Labour Party has betrayed its social democratic routes. It no longer has involvement with Britain's workers' unions and seems to have chosen to take an approach to democracy that is to the expense of listening to its constituents -- the very people who helped the party to get into power in the first place. Britain's Labour has also completely changed direction since the "beginning" of the "war on terror," bearing a much closer resemblance to a Conservative government in light of the military action that it has taken against various alleged threats.

Apparently, the Conservative Party were in fact part of the bastion of MPs that voted against the Terrorism Bill, despite the legislation's authoritarian nature being stringently consistent with the policy of that party. Concerns have been expressed that the Conservatives are engaging in this, which would essentially be a tactical action, in order to ensure that they maintain a degree of credibility in the eyes of the public. Following their defeat by a wide margin in the most recent election, which took place in May this year, the Conservatives need to scrape together every additional nuance of support that they can get. Not only does having contributed significantly to the voting down of the Terrorism Bill establish the Conservatives as a politically relevant force, but it sets them on a clear populist path that has the strong potential to serve them well in the event of Blair falling down before the next election.