The Hypocrisy of Labour

Information is beginning to emerge about how the abortion vote on Tuesday evening was subtlely whipped by Labour.

As Conservative Home point out this morning in this great chart, the abortion vote did split roughly on party lines.

Now some of that is to do with how socially liberal Labour MPs tend to be (and socially conservative Tory MPs are), but there is growing evidence that that is not the only reason. Nadine Dorries has the following to say:

Much went on behind the scenes at the vote the other evening, and I have promised one particular journalist to keep it off my blog until Monday – so frustrating!

The voting divided along party lines.

For the 22 week amendment 83 per cent of Conservative MPs voted for 22 weeks, 80 per cent of Labour MPs voted against it.

To say that abortion is a free vote and non party political issue is a nonsense. It clearly divides along party lines.

Labour abandoned the free vote principle by whipping their MPs on a three line whip ‘to attend the chamber’. I saw the whipping note, a copy of it was left for us to see .

More of what happened will surface over the weekend.

So there was a whipping note for an apparently free vote. Remarkable. I’m looking forward to more coming out over the next few days, but it’s starting to make the remarks made by Dawn Primarolo (the Health Minister and High Priestess of Molech), that Edward Leigh Nadine Dorries were playing party politics with the vote, look slightly ironic…