British Prime Minister Tony Blair was facing backbench calls to stand aside after nearly 63 Labour members of parliament (MPs) inflicted a first, and overwhelming, House of Commons defeat on his eight-year-old government, spurning his personal plea to respect the police by giving them powers to detain terrorist suspects for up to 90 days.
In the biggest reverse for a British government on a whipped vote since James Callaghan's administration in the late 1970s, Blair was defeated comprehensively by 322 to 291, with 49 Labour backbenchers, including 11 former ministers, defying a three-line whip. Thirteen others abstained.
As the impact on the prime minister's authority sunk in, MPs then voted by 323 to 290 to support detention without charge for only 28 days, the position advocated by the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.
PHOTO: AP
The scale of the defeat rocked Labour whips, raising questions about Blair's political judgment of late and suggesting that he now has a permanent cadre of irreconcilable backbenchers who neither listen to nor respect his views, leaving him in charge of an effective minority administration on controversial issues.
The former Cabinet minister Clare Short said the defeat presaged further revolts.
"It would be good for him, and certainly the Labour administration, if he moved on quickly," she said.
Another former minister, Frank Dobson, predicted bigger revolts on Blair's plans for schools.
Cabinet ministers insisted they would not water down their reform program, but they will have to redouble their efforts to explain their plans on education, incapacity benefit and health reform.
Blair, who personally decided to gamble by putting the 90-day detention to the vote, sounded an uncomprehending note afterwards.
"The country will think parliament will have behaved in a deeply irresponsibly way, I have no doubt about that at all," he said.
"Sometimes it is better to do the right thing and lose, than to win doing the wrong thing. I have no doubt what the right thing was to do in this instance, to support the police," he said.
"When the police say they are fighting mass-casualty terrorism and they provide examples of why they need the powers, I think you need powerful reasons to turn round and say no to them," he said. "There was every possible safeguard, with the police having come back to a high court judge to make its case every seven days."
Blair said he would not try to overturn Wednesday night's vote.
Reaction
Major newspapers agreed yesterday that Blair's defeat was a major watershed in his administration.
Both the Times and the Daily Mail splashed Blair's setback on their front pages with the identical headline: "Beginning of the end?"
"Mr Blair has looked invincible for the past eight years. But after yesterday, he no longer walks on water," said the Times in an editorial. "From today he must at least prove that he can walk the line."
The Guardian said that while Blair's position is not untenable, Wednesday's events meant it was "more fragile than ever before."
"It marks a new era in this government's history ... Mr Blair needs to listen to parliament's voice. He will be in serious trouble if he decides ... that [defeat] is always the better course."
The Daily Mail, consistently the most anti-Blair of the major newspapers, said: "Tony Blair is today more seriously wounded than he has ever been."
The conservative Daily Telegraph recalled how the Commons has been derided in the past "for its poodle-like nature" -- and that on Wednesday, "the poodle roared."
"The real news yesterday was that Tony Blair has, finally, lost the power to get his agenda into law .... The drubbing the prime minister has received from MPs should be chastening."
In the Sun, political editor Trevor Kavanagh said Blair's opponents "have tasted blood and won't stop snapping at his heels now."
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