WHEELED INTO PARLIAMENT WITH A SICK BOWL

LABOUR cried foul when a parliamentary convention led to sick and heavily pregnant MPs being ordered to vote in person on the crunch Brexit Bill this week.

A spat between Government and Opposition whips meant the “nodding through” procedure in the Commons where specified MPs on both sides are spared from physically going through the division lobbies was dropped in several cases.

Labour backbencher Naz Shah was helped through the chamber in a wheelchair clutching a sick bowl while frontbencher Laura Pidcock, eight months pregnant, was in obvious discomfort during the crunch vote on Theresa May’s Brexit plans. Within minutes Labour sources were decrying the “inhuman” and “heartless” behaviour of the Tories. They complained the MPs concerned had been “forced” to go through the ordeal by the Government.

This failure of the usually civilised Westminster conventions must have been distressing and unpleasant for the MPs involved. But Labour’s attempt to exploit the episode says much about the smear tactics the party deploys under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Labour MPs take their voting instructions from their own party whips, not the Government’s.

Such complaining would have baffled Labour MPs from previous generations. Under James Callaghan’s minority Labour government in 1979, the late Sir Alfred Broughton was ready to be driven 200 miles in an ambulance to take part in a crucial vote despite being mortally ill. The then government chief whip, Walter Harrison, decided it would be wrong to order the 77-year-old backbencher to attend. Without Broughton’s vote, the government lost a motion of no confidence and collapsed. Harrison took responsibility for his decision and did not blame the Tory opposition. Broughton, who died a week after the vote, had begged to be allowed to come to Westminster for the division. He saw supporting his party as his duty, not something he was “forced” to do.

Too many of today’s Labour MPs appear to have embraced the culture of victimhood that dominates much of the modern Left. The sense of duty and responsibility that drove MPs such as Harrison and Broughton has been replaced by a lot of selfregarding whingeing.