Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just back from the US where Gordon Brown was talking about how to govern the world in a major speech I hope to blog about later (delagging permitting), only to find that it appears he can't even govern his domestic provinces with the moral authority he craves. Even Jackie Ashly thinks he could be out within days! She predicts that a successful rebellion against him on dropping the 10p tax band or refusing to extend detention without charge to 42 days, could fatally undermine him and open the way to a destructive leadership battle that will ruin Labour's re-election chances (which are?). She is convined that the 10p reform was a genuine "mistake", i.e. it was not meant to hurt the less well-off, and writes:
after the 10p vote will be plenty more possible crises, not least the vote over the 42-day detention proposal. On both, I am 100% against the official government view and, with every instinct, on the side of the Labour rebels. But disaster is looming and the real parliamentarians have carefully to weigh in the balance what they now do, and ask how much likelier it will make a Tory landslide a year hence.
When it comes to careful "weighing," the 10p mistake can indeed be easily rectified, best of all by greatly raising the income at which tax is paid at all. But extending detention without charge is being pursued with full deliberation after the case against has been authoritatively set out, and when it could easily have been dropped. So it cannot be possibly be interpreted as an innocent mistake. Responsibility for the weighing and the balancing on this has to be the Prime Minister's and there is surely no basis for arguing, as Ashley seems to be, that MPs must save him from the price of his error by voting for a measure which is wholly wrong, both in principle and as a tactic against the threat of fundamentalist terrorism. To be 100% against it must mean supporting those who want to vote it down.
