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Islington Tribune - by TOM FOOT
Published: 13 June 2008

Emily and Jeremy join the revolt on 42 day detention

BOTH Islington MPs voted against the government in Wednesday’s Parliamentary vote on whether police should be allowed to hold terror suspects for 42 days without charge.
Emily Thornberry and Jeremy Corbyn joined 36 MPs rebellion that almost tipped the scale against Prime Minister’s Gordon Brown. The revolt slashed Government’s 66 seat majority to just nine.
Ms Thornberry, for Islington South and Finsbury, said: “Voting against my party is not something I do lightly. This was not a vote to decide whether Gordon Brown should be leader. I believe that a compromise of 28 days – something I put forward when Tony Blair was suggesting it should be 90 days – was quite enough.
“I have had loads of constituents calling me up about this. 42 days would not have been good for community relations.”
Political commentators have since claimed that the Labour Party chiefs had bought votes from the UDP in exchange for accepting a string of demands from the Northern Ireland unionists including lifting EU sanctions on Cuba.
“I certainly wasn’t bought,” Ms Thornberry added. “It was a matter of principle.”

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