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Tony Blair Faces Sudden Political Death

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 11/15/2005

In a first major parliamentary defeat since becoming Prime Minister in 1997, The British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced a massive defeat in what turned out to be the biggest turn around for a British government on a whipped vote after James Callaghan’s administration in the late 1970’s.

His plea to extend the period from which police can detain terror suspects without charging them from 14 to 90 days was voted down by the House of Commons by 322 to 291 votes but, however, the MPs then voted by 323 to 290 to support detention without charge for only 28 days.

After the July 7th London bombings, which killed more than 50 people, Tony Blair has proposed a new security measures to Parliament in an effort to implement tougher terror laws.

“His plans were speeding up detention of foreign-born agitators, creating a charge of “indirect incitement” for people who glorify terrorism anywhere in the world, using closed pre-trial hearings to examine sensitive evidence, banning certain Islamist groups, closing troublesome mosques and most importanly a plan to extend the period for which police can hold terror suspects without charging them, from 14 to 90 days,” reports The Economist.

Even before the vote, most of the observers refuted his controversial proposals but Ministers and the London Police had argued raucously about the 14 days’ detention without charge being very short to assess loads of multifaceted evidences.

Meanwhile, the massive scale of the defeat has rocked Labour ship, and has raised swirling questions about Blair’s political grip within his own party as some 49 Labour MPs refused to back him, even after being put under huge pressure by the party’s whips.

To add salt to the Blair’s injury, immediately after the vote, Michael Howard, leader of the opposition Conservatives, claimed that Mr Blair's authority had “diminished almost to vanishing point”.

Few other former cabinet joined the Blair thrashing party too. The former cabinet minister Clare Short said that it would be good for Blair and the Labour administration, if he moved on quickly, reports The Guradian.

But Mr Blair was defiant, saying that “the country will think that Parliament has behaved in a deeply irresponsible way.”

The only silver lining for Mr. Blair is that the fight against the terrorism will go on regardless of his defeat but one perennial fear is this - it might lose direction as things may go tougher for him in the future.

Nevertheless, this recent defeat, has encountered a revolution that is likely to change the way people think about Blair from now onwards. Mr. Blair’s misjudgment has thrown himself and the Labor’s stake wide open before the currents of time.

Hence for now, predicting the impact of this British political shock is tricky as Mr. Blair became the latest vicitm of Mr. Bush’s idea. At least the world now knows about Guantanamo Bay and the CIA’s secret prisons in Asia and Eastern Europe.