Part of the Trident: we don't buy it tour blog 
© Greenpeace/Davison
I wake up, my first decent lie-in since Christmas, and realise it's the 15th of March - the ides of March - not a good day for Julius Caesar who was assassinated in the Senate on this date in 44BC. And not a good day for that other megalomaniac with a receding hairline, Tony Blair. His attempts to quell the biggest domestic rebellion in 10 years failed miserably and now his plans to replace Trident have been utterly de-legitimised nationally and internationally.
Here's some of my favourite numbers:
- 95 - number of Labour MPs who voted against the government
- 4 - number of Labour ministers with a conscience, this week's resignations
- 8 - number of Labour ex-ministers who voted against the government
- 76 billion - number of pounds that the world now knows Blair will squander on Trident
Yesterday's rebellion began with anarchy and the theme of "nothing's too crazy today" kept on going. I spent my morning in a room where Bianca Jagger, Annie Lennox and Vivienne Westwood, at the centre of a mad media scrum. They were at a meeting of Labour rebels, girding their loins (the MPs that is, no sign of any celebrity loins) before another hard day of bullying by the Labour whips and Big Gordon Brown.
Then on to the Commons, to watch the intrepid Greenpeace leafleteers bring about the meltdown of civilised society and threaten the remaining threads of democracy in front of the mother of Parliaments - by illegally handing out leaflets. Several were threatened with arrest for this seditious activity. Come on the Met, hardly anarchy is it?
Across the road to Parliament Square, past the braying insistency of Brian Haw to be greeted by three bronzed stilt-walkers, eight feet tall and equipped with whips - but enough of past Tory pecadillos - the stilt-walkers were whipping a flock of human sheep, just as the Labour whips had been doing all week as they desperately failed to stem the flood of rebellion. Past the sheep the activists from Block the Builders had blocked one side of Parliament Square for half an hour, and police were now trying forlornly to cut them free from their locked-on concrete tubes and bins. Block the Builders just lay there, puffing sedately on their copious roll-ups as if waiting for a bus. Serenity of purpose. Gotta love 'em.
Now I am drawn in to the media frenzy. I do my third live interview of the week with London's LBC radio, locking horns yet again with an old style radio host who seems to be obsessed by the idea that the Iranians are about to come charging over the hills waving warheads. I firmly remind him that it's the UK that has the warheads, and that is breaking the treaties by ordering a new bomb.
I speak to other regional radio stations and at last a reasonable debate can take place. Then it's a live telly interview with Al Jazeera's London office. Blair's folly is really spreading all over the globe - later on I talk to more overseas news crews and Spanish radio. The Trident decision has massive international implications, destabilising world security by provoking proliferation in a staggeringly hypocritical way.
Next, an hour-long silent vigil begins, powerful and moving. Bearing witness. Speaking (silently of course) to power. The calmness is soon broken as the critical mass bike riders arrive in Parliament Square, cycling slowly but legally. No, sorry, clearly not...the police stop them, for, errrrrmm, I dunno. Clearly too subversive again. The statue of Oliver Cromwell looks on approvingly as the tentacles of the state smother another peaceful protest. Yet the protest goes on, two more critical mass rides take place later and, just before the vote comes in, the emergency siren goes off. It really is five minutes to midnight on the Doomsday clock, Blair is leading us into a new arms race, turning the clock back to the Cold War, scaremongering for all he's worth. It's legacy time at Number 10.
We hear of more resignations and then get the news about the massive rebellion. Blair has failed to get his party to support him, it goes through only with the support of his friend Cameron. Must be like looking in the mirror for them both.
But this story is far from over, Blair's legacy is now Brown's albatross. The new PM inherits a party split over the issue, a public strongly against replacement, and massive holes in his spending plans that £76 billion will do nothing to ease. Life is just going to get hotter for Brown from now on, especially as the Government has made easy promises about further parliamentary votes as Trident plans progress. Rebellions are contagious, and Brown has a major outbreak on his hands that won't go away. Is there a doctor in the House?
