Shame on you, Mr Brown. No wonder you’re biting your nails to the quick. Your number is most definitely up. Rarely has a government risked so much of its credibility for so hollow a victory - and in such certainty that it will be crushed into humiliating defeat at the next round. The vote on the 42-day detention without charge was surely too close a call for the Prime Minister whose personal authority rested on a win at any cost. So desperate is this man to cling to power that he appears to be willing to compromise on almost anything including his principles. And last week we saw that desperation sink to even murkier depths with a controversial ‘yes’ vote patched together with bribery, bullying and political butchery. We saw an MP with cancer cajoled from his sick bed, a colleague recovering from an operation placed into a wheelchair to vote and we saw support for the Government from the DUP of all parties. The irony of watching that great lumbering figure of an old warhorse, Ian Paisley shuffling into the “aye” lobby along with eight of his Northern Irish colleagues will not be lost on the Labour benches nor on the DUP members who will be probably too busy laughing all the way to the bank with their undoubted promises of increased investments for Northern Ireland to spend too much time worrying about the fate of Brown et al. If Brown can interpret such cynical support as a de facto vote of confidence in him and his policies then he is more other worldly than has previously been mused. This isn’t a boost for his authority; it reveals him as an authoritarian control freak who is so consumed by his own personal standing that he has allowed principles and his party philosophies to evolve into a meaningless mess. There isn’t a human rights lawyer in the land who can support this detention proposal. Our own Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini has come out against it along with her UK counterpart, Sir Ken Macdonald, and the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith yet Brown and his henchmen continue to flail around hopelessly trying to defend the idiotic position they have got themselves into. Where is the conviction, the passion the standing up for human rights and dignity and where is the democracy? What does the Labour Party mean any more? As Alex Salmond told the Scottish Parliament on the day after the vote, he hadn’t met with the Prime Minister recently but did glimpse him briefly on a different side to him of the House of Commons lobby when it came to the detention vote. You could almost hear yet another Scottish Labour card-carrying member reach for the SNP membership hotline. When the likes of Ian Paisley, a man reviled for so long by so many right-thinking lefties as a bigot and a bully, is welcomed by Brown and his allies as a saviour of their mettle, then you have to wonder what has happened to the Labour Party. Diane Abbott told the House that she had become an MP to defend the marginalised. Isn’t that why most people join Labour? Could this be the end of the road for the party as we know it? Has it become a bit too preoccupied with retaining power rather than changing society? Gordon Brown came into power pledging a crusade against child poverty only to see it rise as he has been busy with taking over banks, cutting corporation tax, encouraging non-doms and curtailing human rights. So, the PM did win last Wednesday but he must now be asking himself, at what cost?

Tag it: