95 Labour MPs say no. But Blair gets his missile

The rebellion, when it came, was even larger than predicted.

Labour's historic divisions over nuclear weapons came back to haunt Tony Blair yesterday when 95 Labour backbench MPs rejected his plans to commence the £20bn renewal of the Trident nuclear submarine system.

The scale of the rebellion, the largest on a domestic issue since 1997, forced the government to rely on the support of the Conservatives to win the vote - a political fact that the Tories will deploy with a vengeance in the next general election.

Were he not already heading for the door, such a vote would be said to signify a PM that has lost the support of his own party. And, as such a vote will be exploited by the Tories at the next election to argue that "Labour is soft on defence", one wonders whose needs Blair was actually serving by bringing such a contentious issue before the House years before any decision had to be taken.

The Tories were quick to seize their opportunity:

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said: "As Blair heads for the horizon, you see the rise of unreconstructed old Labour. Brown's certainly going to have his work cut out."

So there we have it. Without Blair, the danger of old Labour is omnipresent. Without our saviour, we are doomed.

Perhaps this is a reading of events that appeals to Blair's vanity. However, it became apparent yesterday that even Blair was backpedalling furiously, realising the scale of the revolt he was unleashing.

Mr Blair told wavering rebels that although they were being asked in principle to maintain Britain's independent deterrent, in practice they were merely being asked to sanction two years' work on the design and concept phase of the new system. He also contended that no parliament could bind another, in effect suggesting the final decision on signing the expensive contracts could be revisited by a government in 2012-2014, led either by David Cameron or Mr Brown.

The decision to downplay the significance of yesterday's vote came after Labour whips warned that the rebellion was spiralling out of control. Some parliamentary aides were told by whips they could miss the vote rather than rebel and so be forced to resign their posts on the lowest rung of the government ladder.

Despite the offer to abstain, three parliamentary aides - Jim Devine, Chris Ruane and Stephen Pound - resigned. They joined Nigel Griffiths, the deputy leader of the house who quit the government on Monday.

As someone who could easily be termed old Labour, I can say with certainty that Blair has never understood us. The very fact that he attempted to portray the vote as insignificant, only makes people even angrier that he forced it to go through at all. And to ask people to vote for something that they are ideologically opposed to, on the grounds that such a vote can later be reversed, is asking someone to stain their conscience for no reason at all.

It was, from start to finish, an insane way to approach old Labour. But the more worrying legacy is that he has now handed Gordon Brown a divided Labour party. He has reopened the divisions of the 1980's.

A minister who resigned from the Government to vote against the Trident decision, Nigel Griffiths, called on Mr Brown to change direction after Mr Blair by making Britain "a country for peace, not war".

"We have led the world in campaigning to meet the Kyoto targets, we have led the fight to eradicate global poverty. We must lead the world in campaigning for the eradication of the nuclear threat and we must lead by example," he said.

He has caused all this damage for a decision that he himself admitted yesterday does not have to be taken until 2012 or 2014.

Well done, Tony. You can add a split Labour party to your wonderful legacy of Iraq.

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Tags: Blair, recommissioning Trident, Labour revolt