In the past few minutes, the government has lost its attempt to relax Sunday trading laws in the Commons 317 votes to 286. The rebellion has been brewing for months, with ministers playing a game of chicken with angry Tory backbenchers right up to the vote.
A last-minute attempt by George Osborne to stave off the rebellion by proposing a series of pilots of the relaxed rules, tabled as a manuscript amendment in the middle of the morning, failed when the Speaker rejected it. This has not helped Osborne’s standing amongst MPs, with some remarking that the whole exercise had shown that the Chancellor had still not learned what the limits of the Tory party’s patience were.
Others, such as Christopher Chope, are calling for a bill introducing the pilots as a whole new bill in the Queen’s Speech. Labour had opposed the changes, and is now calling for ministers to confirm that they will abandon what Angela Eagle rather dramatically called the ‘tawdry’ plans overall.
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