These catch-22s were angrily outlined by Joanna Lumley, a popular actress whose father served with the Gurkhas: she felt, she said, "ashamed of our administration". Members of the all-party parliamentary home-affairs committee described the plan as "unnecessarily restrictive, morally wrong and offensive". The climactic vote against the government, following a debate tabled by the Liberal Democrats, was won by 267 votes to 246. Rebel Labour MPs — 27 of them — swung it.

It is a feather in the cap of Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems' leader, who has struggled to define his party against the newly rampant Tories. And it is another self-inflicted wound for Mr Brown's government, which seems increasingly unable to read the public mood. A vote on his panicked proposals to clean up MPs' expenses, scheduled for April 30th, seemed likely, as The Economist went to press, to test his authority still more.

© The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009