What impact will last night's vote have on Nick Clegg's prospects, a businessman asked me this morning. Wrong question. Not much on Clegg, I think. He's still a training leader and folk will soon forget it. Clegg was unlucky to cop the overnight headlines, especially since both Labour and Tories had splits of their own to nurse. David Cameron's hostages to fortune may be more significant.
Why so? As younger and nimbler bloggers have already pointed out, Professor Philip Cowley of Nottingham University (revolts.co.uk) has done the numbers with a better database than most of us. Some 26 Labour MPs defied the Brown whip, but some 40 Tories ignored Cameron's advice, almost the same proportion of the parliamentary party as the 15 Lib Dems who gave the thumbs down to Clegg.
Not on the main votes, but when Tory MP Bill Cash, a top man in the Euro-obsessives kamikaze tendancy, moved a new clause 9 which asserted that nothing in the Lisbon Treaty bill should be construed as further undermining the supremacy of any British court.
Some 40 Tory MPs voted with Cash, including 12 MPs of the 2005 intake. Ken Clarke voted the other way, natch. The Tories have a line of this, namely that at 7.17 pm last night they gave their MPs the OK to go home, ie no revolt against the Cameroon line that they should all abstain.
Fine, except that it's nonsense. Like Jim Callaghan's battered whips office in the late 70s when Labour had no Commons majority at all, they sent them home to avoid embarrassment. In the 70s it was called "rug pulling''. Rather than lose by 300 to 299, Labour MPs would be sent home. In this instance 40 hardcore sceps stayed behind to ignore Dave.
Watch it, Dave, they were telling him. Cameron has two serious problems as he moves to seek the centre ground. On both Europe and tax his core vote drags him on to unelectable ground. It wouldn't be unelectable, Mrs T proved, if Labour were insensitive to either issue, as it once was. But it isn't. Do the Tory grassroots care?
