Anger as Blair plays trump card

EURO ELECTIONS

TONY BLAIR'S threat to use the Parliament Act to push through the "undemocratic" closed list of candidates for European elections was under fire last night as Tory peers provoked a constitutional clash with the Commons.

The Prime Minister's readiness to force through the new voting arrangements was bitterly attacked for giving Mr Blair, not the voters, the final choice over the candidates for European Parliament elections.

Speaking ahead of last night's crunch vote, Lord Strathclyde, the Tory leader in the Lords, said his party would give "one last shot" to defeat the controversial voting method.

"A sixth defeat would be ... unprecedented and illustrate the staunch opposition to this totally undemocratic system which has united all parties," he said. "To use the Parliament Act on a measure ... would look terrible in the history books and the Government should be aware of that."

As the Government threatened to use its powers to get the Bill on to the statute book in the new year, one Labour MEP spoke out against the "atmosphere of fear" surrounding the selection of candidates.

Shaun Spiers, Labour MEP for London Southeast, accused the Labour leadership of purging the Euro-lists of any candidate it considered "too old, awkward, left or eccentric".

Writing in today's Fabian Society quarterly, he said Labour politicians were "willing to regurgitate the pap served up by Millbank [the Labour Party headquarters] because they were probably motivated by ambition, loyalty, and a justifiable faith in the party as an election-winning machine".

Mr Spiers was placed sixth in a list of 10 for the European elections next year in his own area, leaving him with only an outside chance of securing his seat. The voters under the new arrangements will not be able to choose individual candidates.

"This atmosphere of fear in the party has been reinforced by the European selections where candidates were chosen on their presentational skills and knowledge of the party line - on what they were meant to think, not on what they do think."

The Bill was rushed through the Commons in a single day before last night's clash with the Lords, with the Government using its massive majority to get it through without amendment.