DUP Saves Brown's Skin

The government has won the 42 days detention vote but Brown and New Labour have lost miserably, scraping through by just nine votes - exactly the number of MPs from Northern Ireland's DUP who voted for these draconian measures.

This was never about 42 days and everything about Brown's failing leadership and the death throes of the New Labour Project.

The New Labour spin doctors did their sums. With the fudges and bribes, it looked like it could scrape through. So what should have been a vote on principles was a vote of confidence in Brown.

The DUP had the financial interests of Northern Ireland and the local economy in mind when they voted. 

But Brown and his cronies gambled that enough Labour MPs would want to avoid causing further destruction of the Party to vote with him. They didn't. But Brown needed to win big, just to show that he is in charge. He didn't and he isn't. This result will be one more nail in Brown's coffin.

A vote for the Bill will not to save the skin of the prime minister bent on self-destruction.

And he played it all out in the media - most notably in Murdoch's Times last week and any other media outlet that would listen to the empty arguments.

Whatever way he tried to spin it, this was 42 days Detention Without Charge or Trial. The most serious threat to our traditions of civil liberties since before the signing of the Magna Carta.

The proposal has been criticised by not only Conservatives, LibDems and backbench Labour MPs, but also the director of public prosecutions, the former attorney general and the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner. 

It doesn't stand a chance of getting through the House of Lords but Brown make it clear he would not back down.

Echoing Blair and his justification for talking this country to war in Iraq, Brown is on record as saying: "I will stick to the principles I have set out and do the right thing." 

Because he thinks it's right, doesn't make it right.