The Government won the division during yesterday’s consideration of the Trade Bill by 18 votes.
This rebellion had little in common with most others, but the names of many who oppose the Government now show a certain predictability.
There’s a case for empowering our courts to make a genocide ruling over the Uighars. But not for giving them a veto on trade deals in doing so.
If we can crack down on products complicit in illegal deforestation, we can do the same for those complicit in Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs.
That’s the biggest Tory revolt so far on a virus-related division, and enough potentially to defeat the Government in future.
From calling the measures “dystopian”, to criticising Whitty and Vallance’s latest graph, there were some scathing speeches.
Four members from the 2019 intake make the top 50, beating longer-serving and higher-ranked colleagues.
Our politicians seem determined, as they appear by videolink, to look like so many captives, held against their will in attics and basements.
We cheer the mission. But government needs more compromise, art, tact and accomodation than campaigning alone allows.
Chris Pincher, the new appointee, must stay in the post for the rest of this Parliament. It’s the only way that a strategy can be implemented properly.
Johnson will be able to call on the advice and views of the Party’s own Muslim MPs, who now include Saqib Bhatti and Imran Ahmad-Khan.
Nusrat Ghani’s allegations are shocking, but speak to a deeper issue that extends beyond Islamophobia.