New Labour's Last Rites

Well, well, well. Labour's gutless brainless lobby-fodder have finally turned!

Blair's first parliamentary defeat has nothing to do with Civil Liberties. The rebellion came from a parliamentary party that had approved mass electronic surveillance without judicial oversight, that had introduced indefinite house arrest, and that had gave the government the power to suspend parliament and seize private property, in an 'emergency' like some fascist third-world dictator.

This rebellion signifies the end for New Labour and for Tony Blair. You can forget serious welfare reform, genuine consumer choice in taxpayer-funded health-care, and the reintroduction of Grant Maintained Schools.

Blair is now politically impotent. He can strike a pose and give a bulldozing speech calling for dramatic reform, but he doesn't have the parliamentary votes to deliver on his soaring rhetoric.

New Labour is dead. Tony Blair killed it. He didn't have the guts to use his majority when he had the chance, and now it's too late.