Philip Cowley is author of The Rebels and the research website Revolts.co.uk. He assesses the government's chances of getting 90-day terror detention on to the statute books:
There appear to be only three ways that the government might get its way this week over the terrorism bill, and avoid the 28-day limit on pre-charge detention put forward last week by Labour MP David Winnick.
1. Enough would-be Labour rebels change their mind, and either abstain or vote with the government. This seems unlikely, given the mood in the Parliamentary Labour Party at the moment.
2. The Conservative frontbench change their position, and agree to vote for the government's compromise (whatever that might be). If this happens, the backbench rebellion could be huge and the government would still win. At a stroke, the government would be free – but the Tories have just repeated that 28 days is the upper limit of what they would accept.
3. Enough Conservative MPs – unhappy about the thought of voting against the advice of the police on a terrorism issue – abstain or vote with the government. It would only take a few to do this and the possibility of a government defeat would become noticeably less likely. If, say, 15 to 20 Conservative MPs quietly abstained, and one or two voted with the government, then any Labour rebellion would need to approach 50 cross-voters willing to defeat the government, a much harder target than the 36 cross-voters needed with a full opposition turnout.
