PM to allow free vote on parts of embryo bill | Politics | guardian.co.uk

Remember the glory days of Tony Blair? Say what? Blair the spinner, Blair the man with the smile no-one trusted, Blair the man who presided (and I do mean presided) over the Iraq débâcle? But, the thing is, however much we might (and did) disagree with Blair’s policies and actions, he fitted the bill of Prime Minister quite well, while Gordon Brown was an effective chancellor. With Blair gone, we have a chancellor in the prime minister’s shoes, and a second-stringer as chancellor.

Nothing shows Brown’s inability to lead the country more than the débâcle over a free vote on embryology. At the most profound level, this is a more serious misjudgement than the phoney election of September. At that time, as we recall, Brown waited too long before deciding that he wasn’t really going to win, and gave David Cameron a much needed (but entirely undeserved) boost. It was a tactical decision, and Brown waited too long, until there was no right answer, and he was left making the best of a bad job.

On the embryology question, though, it is not a question of waiting too long before conceding that MPs should have a free vote on the ‘ethical’ aspects.

Quite simply, there should never have been a question of whipping MPs on an issue of fundamental conscience. Whether Catholic cardinals have been misleading MPs or not (as one Labour peer is alleging), parliamentarians were being instructed that their consciences could play no role in one of the most profound ethical questions ever to come before a British parliament.

As far as I understand it – and I’m not someone with a huge axe to grind on this issue – the main argument for permitting new levels of experimentation in embryology is an economic one: if we don’t take the lead in the new technology, then other countries will, and Britain will be left behind. I’m not really sure I understand how this argument stacks up when we seem so keen to disinvest in other aspects of British technological leadership that have a much faster return for far less ethical issues. The main argument against it is that we are delving into areas into which man is not meant to delve. Again, I’m not sure that this is as clear cut as some people are suggesting.

What I am sure about, though, is that the discussion and the decision should be and must be in the hands of MPs themselves. Government simply does not have the authority to dictate conscience to individual members. If it did have that authority, then our general elections would be nothing more or less than presidential elections – though without the balancing of Congress and Senate which they have in the USA. As a nation, we would collectively decide, once every few years, to invest our entire ethical, moral, economic and political future in a single individual, until that individual decided to step down or to call a fresh election.

Once we allow that the government can require MPs to vote in a particular direction on a matter of the meaning of life itself, then we really can hold nothing back. There is then no reason why Gordon Brown should not, at the end of his term of office, require MPs to vote for an arbitrary extension of parliament. That, after all, would merely be a matter of a technical change to our voting arrangements.

Now, of course, Gordon Brown would never do that: he understands the political process. He also understands that a lurch towards dictatorship (which is what it would be) would see investors clamouring to get their assets off-shore, destabilising the one thing that Brown really does understand – the economy.

But this simply makes it all the more clear that Brown is in the wrong job – he lacks the fundamental moral judgement to recognise that the issue at hand is exactly the matter of conscience in which a free vote is the only option.

I quite enjoyed living in the Brown economy. Taxes were quite low (especially when compared to under the previous Tory administration), inflation was low, interest rates were low. I now have the sense that the firm hand at the tiller is missing, just as we are headed into stormier waters.

I was never a big fan of Blair – but I recognised and respected his qualities. Blair would never have made the categorical moral misjudgement that Brown has made.

Economic instability we have weathered before. But the complete lack of leadership and moral judgement which Brown shows as Prime Minister is alarming. I suppose I could do the traditional opposition thing and call for him to go. But if he went, who in Labour would have the authority to step into his place? Jack Straw is a good man, but Straw in charge would be like having your maths teacher running the country. Messrs Miliband, Miliband, Hutton, and Darling are entirely uninspiring. Blears, Balls and Burnham would struggle to get anyone to take them seriously. In fact, reading through the cast list of Brown’s cabinet is like reading through a copy of Who Isn’t Who, or the list of extras in a BBC daytime TV drama.

Seriously, it’s time for a general election.

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