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42 day vote - the squeeze is on
42 day vote - the squeeze is on
Last Modified: 11 Jun 2008
By:
Lindsay Taylor, Gary Gibbon
Downing Street says tonight's vote on 42-day detention powers for terror suspects will be "very, very tight".
The squeeze is on. There are reports of £3,000-a-day compensation for anyone wrongly detained, enticements to win over individual Labour rebels and efforts to woo the nine Democratic Unionist MPs.
The parliamentary arithmetic certainly bears that out. The government has a working majority of 66. So if all opposition MPs vote against the government, 34 Labour rebels are needed to defeat the measure - around the number being discussed in the corridors of Westminster.
But if the 9 DUP members vote with the government, it would take 52 Labour rebels - far more than are expected to vote against the government.
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