It was supposed to be nothing to do with Brown. The 42 day legislation was not a test of his leadership they said. Yet by the way the final result fell any chance Brown had of avoiding direct assessment on his own performance and abilities was dashed in to the wind. Prime Ministers and world leaders frequently say that they will never negotiate with terrorists (at least with the public knowing about it), to do so shows weakness and opens to door to manipulation and extortion. By managing to only win this issue through alleged personal involvement in coercing MPs from other parties such as the DUP he has shown in no uncertain terms his weakness, and why "doing the right thing" sometimes means dropping bad legislation and not negotiating on terror legislation.

You're all aware of the background, the legislation passed with only 9 votes. The Tories were incensed and perhaps a little out of order after the result was read out. If Anne Widdicome had held the line the majority would have been 7, and if the DUP MPs had not given in to nationalistic greed over principles (it seems that they forget lessons from past mistakes when money is offered) then the majority would have been the other way. This was not a victory in anything other than the technical sense, as David Davies made clear before the vote...this argument has been won.

The debate itself throughout the day was one of the more riveting (if you can ever describe parliamentary sessions as such). There were some true stars shining for personal liberty, most on the side of the Tories. True stand outs were David Davies with a calm and collected destruction of the reasons for the policy, Chris Huhne with a truly anger filled reiteration of much that Davies said with a more liberal focus, and Dianne Abbott with a systematic destruction of several issues that no other MP had settled on. The arguments for amounted to two lines of defense.

1. We must trust the Home Secretary, because I do
2. What happens if we let a terrorist out and he commits an act of terror after 28 days?

Huhne of course said it best when he asked what supporters of 42 days would do when they released someone and they committed and atrocity on the 43rd or further days. The answer was silence and the typical avoiding of a pertinent question. As many MPs stated, the case for 42 days was the same case for indefinite detention with an arbitrary figure stamped on it and no supporter of 42 days could rise the argument out of this basic failing. When they tried they misrepresented the truth and plainly got things wrong. One MP, Dari Taylor, showed in spectacular form why she isn't competent enough to be an MP...backing the government to the hilt while claiming falsely no-one innocent had been held over 12 or 14 days (the specific number eludes me, I must admit) and misunderstanding current affairs outside of the UK.

So what of the future? The Lords are widely expected to reject this bill in its now current form, but that doesn't mean it's dead. The Parliament Act is a potential tool for a Prime Minister that has shown nothing is beneath him when it comes to passing policy he "believes is right" regardless of mountains of professional opinion to the contrary.

I think we have to accept on some level that there is now a fair chance we will have to live under this illiberal legislation (as we have with 28 days). Perhaps now is the time to stop forgiving its use and pull up the government on its use. One opportunity we all have is to lobby MPs to ensure they have enough evidence to damn a person to a further 2 weeks of detention, but I'm sure there are other things we can do to make this legislation difficult to live with for the government.