Last night's vote on the Welfare Bill shows that Labour is divided. The division though, isn't so much between left and right as between reality and the Bubble.

The Bill will cost the poorest (pdf) families hundreds of pounds per year, increase homelessness and child poverty (pdf) and create insecurity for many low-paid workers who are at high risk of losing their jobs*. And its motives are based in large part upon myths - that welfare spending is a burden, that there's a pressing need to cut the deficit, and that there are distinct groups of workers and claimants rather than constant movement between them.

What we have, then, is a divide. On the one hand, there is the reality of increased misery for hundreds of thousands. On the other, there is the Bubble of Westminster politics which has created economic lies and which regards cuts to welfare merely as a political game between Osborne and Labour. The poor have no place in this Bubble and thus no voice**.

No Labour MP, who has the foggiest idea of what the party is for, could in good conscience, possibly do anything other than oppose the Bill.

But there's the rub: "good conscience". The case for abstaining is that sometimes bad conscience is necessary. Labour, it's said, must obey the rules of the Bubble by appearing "moderate" and not the party of welfare.

I happen to agree with Simon that this is bad strategy. If the debate is framed in Bubble terms in which welfare is a burden rather than insurance, Labour will always appear "weaker" than the Tories. And there is a big danger that Labour will actually come to believe its own lies and so lose any vestigial reality-based principles.

This, though, is the issue. There can be no question that from any left-of-centre view, the Welfare Bill is terrible - and its ally, cuts in tax credits, even more so. The reality is clear. What's not so clear is whether reality matters any more.

* The big cuts in workers' incomes because of Osborne's cuts to tax credits are not part of the Bill.

** Compare the debate about welfare cuts to the Labour's proposed mansion tax. Whereas the potential losers from the latter were high-profile, the losers from the former are largely nameless. This matters, because the mere act of communication increases sympathy.