AFTER all the fake sound and fury of parliamentary question time, with party leaders locked in apparent combat without quarter given or asked for, the real situation emerged on Thursday when Labour twice acted to save the Cameron government from defeat.
MPs voted to reject a bid by nearly 100 rebel Tory MPs to stop ‘foreign criminals’ using European human rights law to avoid deportation.
The Tory MPs were defying Cameron and Osborne who had told them that such an amendment was illegal in relation to EU law and should not be passed.
However, the two arrogant loudmouths, Cameron and Osborne, did not have the gumption to vote against their backbenchers so they abstained.
If Labour had also abstained, the Tory Party would have suffered the most humiliating defeat possible. Instead, it was revealed to all that discrediting and getting rid of the Tory-led government is not the number one priority of this Labour leadership.
In fact, it had been expected at one stage that Labour MPs would abstain, to see Cameron publicly humbled and the Tory Party placed on the edge of the abyss.
In the event, Labour did not match Cameron and Osborne’s abstention and the amendment was defeated by 241 to 97.
Dominic Raab – the Tory MP behind the amendment – told MPs it was time the law was changed so foreign criminals could no longer use Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – a right to a family life – to escape deportation.
Such was the chaos and confusion in the Tory ranks that, just as May was attacking Raab’s amendment, Downing Street was announcing that ministers were to abstain in the vote.
She told MPs the amendment was ‘incompatible’ with the European Convention on Human Rights.
However, when it came to the Theresa May plan to allow herself, and any other Home Secretary, to go to court and get the go-ahead of a judge to take away British citizenship from an individual, on the basis of her suspicions of terrorism – rendering them stateless, a police state measure if ever there was one – Labour abstained, allowing this amendment to be carried by 297 to 34.
The Tory Party must be collectively saying a prayer to whatever god it worships, thanking the lord for such an opposition.
LibDem MP Sarah Teather condemned May for seeking a ‘blank cheque’ to rob citizens of their rights on the grounds that their conduct was deemed ‘seriously prejudicial’. Labour, however, shamefully abstained and acquiesced to granting May a ‘blank cheque’ to rob citizens of their rights.
Labour, in fact, supports this Tory Immigration Bill.
When Labour allows it to be carried, the Act will allow ‘foreign criminals’ to be deported before the outcome of their appeal is known, as long as they do not face ‘serious irreversible harm’ at home. How delicately ‘serious irreversible harm’, ie death, is put.
It will cut the number of grounds for appeal against deportation from 17 to four, compel landlords to check whether tenants are in the UK illegally, with those failing to do so facing large fines, force banks to check immigrants’ legal status before offering accounts, and make some temporary migrants – such as students – pay a £200-a-year levy towards the cost of NHS services. It will bring in the 100% UK police state.
Meanwhile, millions of UK workers and youth are having their lives ruined by the Tory drive to smash the NHS and the Welfare State – while Labour is actively keeping the Tories in office!
Nevertheless, the Tory Party and Tory-led government can now be seen to be completely split and divided, and thus totally unfit to govern anything, no mind a country.
The trade unions must take advantage of this situation. They must call a general strike to bring down the split and divided Tory-led regime and replace it with a workers government and socialism.
There will never be a better time to take this decisive action that will be supported by all workers and youth and by the majority of the middle class.