British prime minister Tony Blair suffered significant damage to his authority last night, falling to his first Commons defeat as MPs rejected his proposal to allow police to hold terror suspects for 90 days.
In a second blow to Mr Blair, the government failed to secure its "failsafe" amendment allowing police to hold suspects for 60 days. MPs instead ignored his warning that they risked compromising Britain's national security by voting to double the present permitted period of detention from 14 to 28 days.
The scale of the government's defeat - by 322 votes to 291 - shocked ministers, some of whom had privately urged Mr Blair to drop the proposal. In the end an estimated 49 Labour MPs joined forces with the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, the DUP, SDLP and Scottish and Welsh nationalists to blow a major hole in the government's anti-terrorist strategy.
Having failed to bring his own party in behind the 90-day proposal, Conservative leader Michael Howard said Mr Blair should treat the defeat as a "confidence" issue and resign. And Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said Mr Blair risked becoming "a lame duck" prime minister unless he realised he could not behave in a "quasi-dictatorial way."
He continued: "If he doesn't, then increasingly his premiership is becoming a John Major premiership - at the mercy of events, at the mercy of opposition, not just from other political parties but from within his own."
But Mr Blair insisted his authority remained intact, and that the defeat of the powers sought by Britain's most senior police chiefs raised questions "about the leadership of other parties too".
Putting a brave face on defeat, he insisted: "Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing, than to win and do the wrong thing." And he said he hoped MPs "do not rue the day" they rejected the proposal.
The prime minister told the BBC: "I don't think it is a matter of my authority. Of course I would have preferred to have won rather than lost - sometimes there are issues that are sufficiently important that they should be determined on their merits." The police had told him the case for change was "compelling" and in those circumstances Mr Blair felt it was his duty to put it to the Commons.
Accepting the verdict of the MPs - "we live in a parliamentary democracy" - Mr Blair nonetheless maintained: "I think it was a wrong decision. I just hope in the longer term we do not rue it."
Mr Howard hailed the outcome "a good day for our parliamentary democracy and for our security". He maintained the Conservative Party had taken "a principled stand" and been fully vindicated.
"Parliament did its job of testing arguments put forward by the prime minister and found them to be inadequate and poorly argued. This devastating defeat is a searing indictment on his judgment," he said. And he charged: "Mr Blair's authority has been diminished almost to vanishing point. This vote shows he is no longer able to carry his own party with him. He must now consider his position."
Home Secretary Charles Clarke denied Mr Blair had been "foolhardy" in pushing ahead with the proposal, however, and insisted the defeat would make Mr Blair want to continue in office rather than quit.
A dramatic day at Westminster had seen chancellor Gordon Brown and foreign secretary Jack Straw ordered back from foreign trips at short notice as Labour whips battled to keep mutinous backbenchers in line.
Ministers also had discussions with the DUP about a possible side-deal safeguard over a financial package for members of the Royal Irish Regiment. Despite reports and impressions of panic at the heart of government, however, Mr Clarke said he had not suspected until half an hour before the crucial vote that the government might lose.