DEPRESSINGLY, but not surprisingly, the majority of Tory MPs proved themselves to be no more than the voting fodder they are as they dutifully filed through the Government lobby last night.
Once again an over-hyped Tory rebellion collapsed, MPs apparently all too easily bought off by Prime Ministerial promises not worth the sweetie paper they were wrapped in.
And yes, it was the same group of 55 ‘Spartans’ who stuck to their guns and were not gulled or bought off. We salute them. They alone, with their few colleagues from the other benches, totalling just 73 out of the 650 MPs, deserve to keep their seats at the next election. Here they are:
Conservative:
Steve Baker (Teller)
Robert Syms (Teller)
Adam Afriyie
Imran Khan
Graham Brady
Andrew Bridgen
Paul Bristow
Christopher Chope
Greg Clark
James Daly
Philip Davies
David Davis
Jonathan Djanogly
Jackie Doyle-Price
Richard Drax
Iain Duncan Smith
Mark Francois
Marcus Fysh
Cheryl Gillan
Chris Green
Damian Green
Kate Griffiths
Mark Harper
Philip Hollobone
David Jones
Julian Knight
Robert Largan
Pauline Latham
Chris Loder
Tim Loughton
Craig Mackinlay
Anthony Mangnall
Karl McCartney
Stephen McPartland
Esther McVey
Huw Merriman
Robbie Moore
Anne Marie Morris
Robert Neill
Mark Pawsey
John Redwood
Mary Robinson
Andrew Rosindell
Henry Smith
Ben Spencer
Desmond Swayne
Craig Tracey
Tom Tugendhat
Matt Vickers
Christian Wakeford
Charles Walker
Jamie Wallis
David Warburton
William Wragg
Jeremy Wright
DUP
Gregory Campbell
Jeffrey Donaldson
Paul Girvan
Carla Lockhart
Ian Paisley
Gavin Robinson
Jim Shannon
Sammy Wilson
Labour’s rebels show how shamefully few have any care for the working classes at all as one business closure follows another, ever more redundancies are announced, the unemployment queue grows – all because of lockdown. Here the few from their ranks who proved able to think for themselves. Well done to:
Apsana Begum
Richard Burgon
Mary Kelly Foy
Andrew Gwynne
Mike Hill
Kevan Jones
Emma Lewell-Buck
Ian Mearns
Grahame Morris
Kate Osborne
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
John Spellar
Graham Stringer
Zarah Sultana
Derek Twigg
Joining the Tory rebel camp in the noes lobby in a what must be a first in his political career was ‘independent’ MP Jeremy Corbyn. Julian Lewis, the independent MP for New Forest East and chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee also voted no.
So in the end just 55 Tories had the principle and guts to stand up to the insane and destructive lockdown policy their bloviating leader is addicted to. They must really be starting to wonder whether the Conservative Party is their party any more, let alone a party anyone in their right mind could ever vote for after the last six months. How the rest do not see that this no longer a health crisis but an economic catastrophe beggars belief.
We are now to suffer months of rules that will kill off any chances of recovery; draconian Tier 3 rules applying to large chunks of the country while cruel, intrusive and unnecessary micro-management of our social interactions still applies everywhere else. As Daniel Miller argued yesterday on these pages, there is nothing that is scientific or rational – and certainly not moral – about this obsessive policy, and overwhelming evidence is now stacked up against it.
The 580 MPs who have just enabled this continued destruction of British lives and livelihoods, a decision that will drag us back into the worst of the 1970s or worse, have a lot to answer for. Jesse Norman, Danny Kruger, Michael Gove, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Johnnie Mercer, Liz Truss, Andrea Leadsom, Theresa May, Greg Hands, Liam Fox – the list goes on. How could you?
Be it on your conscience how you voted last night.
