James Tarranto at OpinionJournal – Best of the Web Todayalso noticed the odd way the House of Common’s vote was covered (as did I here):
Parliament Isn’t RevoltingBelying claims that Prime Minister Tony Blair is in trouble, Britain’s House of Commons yesterday gave his Iraq policy a strong vote of support. “Lawmakers by a vote of 434-124 approved a government-sponsored motion which backed the prime minister’s efforts to resolve the crisis through the United Nations and called on Iraq ‘to recognize this as its final opportunity’ to disarm,” the Associated Press reports from London. Another motion, stating that “the case for military action against Iraq [is] as yet unproven,” was voted down, 393-199.
Blair won these votes with the support of 77.8% and 66.4% of parliamentarians, respectively. That’s a pretty convincing margin, but look how the left-wing media spin the story:
“Britain’s Blair Suffers Parliament Revolt Over Iraq”–Reuters“Blair Suffers Huge Revolt on Iraq”–CNN
“Revolt of the Backbenchers: Blair suffers biggest rebellion as 121 Labour MPs vote against war”–ndependent
“Rebel Vote Stuns Blair”–Guardian
When Congress passed the Iraq war resolution in October, 77% of senators and 69% of House members voted “yes”–very close to the margins by which Blair prevailed in the Commons. We don’t remember reading a lot of stories back then about the “huge revolt” against President Bush.
I will note that Tarranto does seem to miss one point, which is that there were a lot of Labourites who voted against Blair, which is an unusual event, hense all the “revolt” talk–but that is about party politics–legislatively, Blair clearly won, which is what matters at this point.
August 10th, 2024 at 10:24 am