James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill has passed its second reading in the House of Commons by 304 votes to 0. The Labour Party’s decision to abstain on the vote, and Conservative backbenchers’ insistence that a vote be held does make the chamber look rather North Korean this afternoon. But what have we learned from just under five hours of debate? Tory HQ’s answer would be five neat points, all entitled ‘Only the Tories will Let Britain Decide’. In reality, the result of the debate wasn’t very interesting (aside from which Labour MPs backed the bill, on which more shortly), but there are still some useful lessons from the debate itself that are worth considering.
1. Only the Tories will Let Britain Decide… but that will probably soon change
As I blogged earlier, Douglas Alexander’s speech in the Commons was more about the dangers of an ‘Out’ vote than the intrinsic problem with a referendum.
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