Nice breakdown of the voting in the Digital Economy Bill from Alix Mortimer :-

Of the 189 Aye votes, I make it 185 Labour and 4 Conservatives. Plus the two tellers were Labour.

Of the 47 Noe votes, I make it 23 Labour rebels, 16 Lib Dems, 5 Conservatives and 3 others (DUP, PC, Ind). Plus the two tellers were Lib Dem

Alix points out that the Tories were largely absent with only 9 voting.  The Labour MPs (and what appears to be normal for them) voted like sheep with the very notable exceptions of  the likes of Tom Watson and Falkirk’s Eric Joyce.

The flaws in the Bill could probably have been fixed had it gone through the usual process and not the wash up.  One cannot help think that the government knew exactly what they were doing with the timing of the Bill and wanted the bill to be this flawed.  Lord Mandelson wasn’t likened to Darth Vader in the Commons for nothing.

Of particular interest to me was that Michael Connarty voted in favour of the bill and is therefore one of the party sheep.  I suspect he knows very little about the internet and should have deferred to experts like Tom Watson or someone like Eric Joyce who took the time to learn about the problems in the bill after getting many emails, tweets and letters about it.  My MP simply ignored me.  He was around for the second reading of the bill, but his main contribution to the debate was the bring up spurious points that looked like delaying tactics to me (trying to pick a point of history about enclosures against Tom Watson?  fine if the Bill had the time it deserved but not if there is only an hour).

The other point was that only 18 LibDems were there to vote against the Bill (16 noes and 2 tellers ?).  Not that it would have made a difference but where were the rest?  I’m assuming that this is another consequence of the timing of the Bill, but it would be nice to have it confirmed.