We’ve just had the results of the vote on the Lords amendment which sought to commit the UK to EEA membership. The overall result was the amendment was rejected by 327 votes to 126, but the interesting story is that Labour managed to split three ways on the topic.
Labour’s whipped position was to abstain, much to the frustration of Stephen Kinnock and a band of pro-EEA MPs on the opposition benches. Their expected rebellion in favour of the EEA amendment materialised – and how, with 74 rebels plus one teller, including five Opposition frontbenchers who resigned in order to back the amendment. They were joined by three Conservative rebels, whose names are no great surprise: Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve. (I’ve listed all the rebels from each main party on both sides of the issue below, for the record.)
However, more surprising is the scale of the simultaneous Labour rebellion to vote against the EEA: 15 Labour MPs voted with the Government, including one (Laura Smith, Crewe and Nantwich), who quit as a Shadow Cabinet Office minister to do so.
As well as bringing the total number of resignations from Corbyn’s front bench past 100, this means a total of 90 Labour MPs rebelled in one direction or the other over the EEA tonight – rebelling against an abstention policy which was supposedly chosen in order to minimise rebellion. That’s more than a third of the Parliamentary Labour Party, a figure which won’t heal Tory bruises from yesterday’s events but will at least draw some of the sting from Opposition politicians’ gloating tweets about disunity on the Government benches.
In short, then, Labour whipped its MPs not to vote at all, but some rebelled by voting for the EEA, and some rebelled by voting against the EEA. Meanwhile, there was also a small Conservative rebellion in favour of the EEA.
Here are the rebels on each side of the issue, by party:
Conservative Pro-EEA rebels
Ken Clarke
Dominic Grieve
Anna Soubry
Labour Pro-EEA rebels
Teller: Susan Elan Jones
Rushanara Ali
Tonia Antoniazzi
Hilary Benn
Luciana Berger
Ben Bradshaw
Chris Bryant
Karen Buck
Richard Burden
Ruth Cadbury
Ann Coffey
Neil Coyle
Mary Creagh
Stella Creasy
Geraint Davies
Stephen Doughty
Rosie Duffield
Maria Eagle
Julie Elliott
Louise Ellman
Paul Farrelly
Mike Gapes
Roger Godsiff
Kate Green
John Grogan
Helen Hayes
Meg Hillier
George Howarth
Rupa Huq
Darren Jones
Helen Jones
Liz Kendall
Ged Killen
Stephen Kinnock
Peter Kyle
David Lammy
Chris Leslie
Seema Malhotra
Kerry McCarthy
Siobhain McDonagh
Pat McFadden
Conor McGinn
Alison McGovern
Catherine McKinnell
Anna McMorrin
Madeleine Moon
Ian Murray
Albert Owen
Jess Phillips
Bridget Phillipson
Ellie Reeves
Rachel Reeves
Emma Reynolds
Joan Ryan
Virendra Sharma
Barry Sheerman
Gavin Shuker
Tulip Siddiq
Andy Slaughter
Angela Smith
Owen Smith
Alex Sobel
Jo Stevens
Wes Streeting
Gareth Thomas
Stephen Timms
Anna Turley
Chuka Umunna
Catherine West
Matt Western
Martin Whitfield
Paul Williams
Phil Wilson
Daniel Zeichner
Labour Anti-EEA rebels
Kevin Barron
Ronnie Campbell
Rosie Cooper
Frank Field
Jim Fitzpatrick
Caroline Flint
Mike Hill
Kate Hoey
Kevan Jones
John Mann
Dennis Skinner
Laura Smith
Gareth Snell
John Spellar
Graham Stringer