Tonight we saw a great victory for parliament say some, others will say a great victory for prayer, others a great victory for freedom of speech.

Many who were not sure will have been praying for God’s will to be done. I have friends and colleagues from a left background who sit on both side of the fence. Some saw the bill as important and vital in its entirety, others saw it as a real danger to free speech and the proclamation of the gospel in the particular. Respecting both sets of people as I do, and not able to make my own decision, all I could do was join the people of the ‘your will be done’ brigade. Now I have to trust that God’s will has been done.

It is clear, however, the government, notably Tony Blair, have yet again shown great arrogance in thinking they can ignore thousands of concerned voices, many of those voices from the world of law, in insisting on trying to push through it’s un-altered racial and religious hatred bill.

I find it interesting that Blair decided note to vote in the second vote,resulting in him losing the vote by 1! Who said one person cannot make a difference! One vote made all the difference. Was the difference made my one person making a decision to vote with their conscience, or was the decision made my one person deciding they did not need to vote? That will be the subject of many discussions around tables and over beers!

We will be here again.

There will be an education vote soon – something I do understand (although Ruth Kelly will say I don’t) and I really hope my party, the party I have always voted for since I could vote, the party I always felt I could only ever vote for, the party I used to think Jesus himself would vote for, the party of justice, of freedom, of fairness – I really hope my party will start to listen again.

For me – I feel pushed out,ignored, betrayed, embarrassed and for the first time ever, after nearly 25 years of Labour Party membership I am wondering if I want to continue. People that know me will find that shocking! If it comes to that, however, I have no illusions – one person won’t make difference … or will they?