The shadow cast by the Davis agenda

TrevorsDen

Then why did he not try to pursue the Davis Agenda from the front bench?

Can you answer that Mr Hoskin?

If this agenda is so important then I would presume that is where he would have been advised staying.

I write as someone who likes Mr Davis. But I find it astonishing that you can write as if its David Cameron's fault that Davis is on the backbenches.

Barry

Do not underestimate Chris Grayling.

wonderfulforhisage

One wonders what the result of a Tory leadership election would be now if it were a two horse race, DDvDC?

My guess is that the betting would be 4/6 DD.

Peter Buss

TrevorsDen. I couldn't agree with you more. Not too happy with him calling it the "Davis Agenda" Sounds more than a touch of self aggrandisment as far as I am concerned.

yorkshire tory from dd's backyard.

Popular with the grass roots?Except that many party activists don't trust him anymore. And until he is trusted [and not casting shadows] he can say where he is.

The trouble with David is that nearly everything is about him.

If his career has taken a dive he has no one to blame but himself.

RW

What makes you think Davis is effectively "on the back benches"? With disciples such as Grayling and Grieve (who is now perfectly placed as shadow Justice Secretary) he's in better command than he was before.

Marcus Cotswell

He won't cast a long shadow, or even a short one. He will be a footnote, no more, unless Cameron decides to bring him back. He might perhaps replace Keith Vaz as Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.
Cameron has no need to bring him back. Admittedly, he had no real need to bring Ken Clarke back, either, but there was at least potentially something to gain there.
Out there in the country, you know, not that many people remember his stand on civil liberties and he doesn't have any sort of following in the country.
This is not meant as a criticism and I have no wish to have a pop at Davis - I'm just saying this is the way it is.

john

Oh dear. Still bitter after all these months.
Davis dug his own political grave. It's better he isn't dug up. He was always overrated.

Verity

Where is Peter Hoskin? He always replies to emails within an hour or two.

And the site has been moving very, very slowly today ... dragging its feet. What is going on?

Something's up.

Ian Walker

With the public perception of his integrity and honesty, he could easily have made a good party chairman; it would have helped flush away the Spelman stench.

Leaving him on the back benches is a mistake that will bite the Tories in the behind, maybe not now, when all are so eager for power, but five or six years down the line.

Verity

A very interesting post posted at 6:31 p.m. and yet, at 2:50 a.m. the following day has only had three comments? Eight hours and three comments?

The same with other threads. Has there been a revolution? Who cares ... your posters will be dropping off you like fleas off a dead dog.

Liza

The shadow cast in Scottish Government efforts to stimulate the economy are punishing the people who were blameless for the downturn — savers — while rewarding those who got us into this mess — the reckless spenders. In addition, savers face a double whammy: low interest rates and the prospect of rising inflation cutting the value of their savings.

Paul L

David Davis is an absolute disgrace. He has already tried to dethrone Cameron with the by-election nonsense. How self-serving can you be?

The "Davis agenda", it seems is to grovel to terror suspects at every opportunity.

Verity, I've noticed a huge drop off in posts right across the site - something fishy is going on.

TevorsDen

Lets be clear - as an outside observer I like Davis. If a party member (which I am not) I would have been tempted to vote for him, but equally just as tempted to vote for the man (Cameron) who would probably appeal to the wider electorate.

But the point is quite frankly you cannot have people resigning from the shadow cabinet on a whim to pursue their own prejudice only to then expect to be brought back in straight away later. Just what would any shadow cabinet be like if everyone behaved like Davis?

There was no policy difference on the issue. Judgement must surelly be called into question here and Hoskins motives too seem in doubt.

BTW - as I understand it the chairman of committees is not in the gift of the PM. It shouldn't be anyway.

strapworld

verity, Peter Hoskins has banned me. I placed a comment on another blog and he binned it! Oh woe is me!

strapworld

Perhaps, with the BNP's electoral success in South East England today, Mr Davis could consider becoming the new leader of this emerging party?

Pete Hoskin

TevorsDen: You're reading stuff (wrongly) into what I've written.

TGF UKIP

DD left the front bench because he could see just how fragile and geographically soft the Tory headline poll lead was and just how misguided the Clique's strategy was likely to be proved.

Hazel Blears has it right in her speech to her constituency party reported on Guido at oreder-order.com - there is very little appetite for a Tory government - so little has Dave convinced or, for that matter, even have tried to convince.

Verity

I too think David Davis left the front bench because he couldn't fail to see the disconnection between the Clique and the voters. I've been saying for three or four months now that there is no ravenous appetite for a Tory victory among the voters. It's more "a plague on both your houses".

This shouldn't be. This government has been both malignant and inadequate on a horrifying scale on every single measure. The voters should wailing in the streets for a competent Conservative government to come in and rescue them, but I hear no such pleas.

The BNP won a seat in a local election in Kent, and they all drew their skirts back in horror. Well, they'd better get used to it. I read that most of the BNP voters had been drawn from Labour.

This tells us that disaffected voters are not going to vote Tory. Yet it should have been a shoo-in.

The only slender chance we have now is, as I have written before, for Labour to manage to slide back in under the door with a tiny, tiny majority and for the government to stagger around in a panic for a year or 18 months, at which point, the new Tory leader could call for a vote of No Confidence, which he would win.

I become daily more horrified by the thought of this incompetent, self-regarding man who, for all his posturing about in running shoes and chav clothes, relates not to the average Briton. Every time I see him with his shirt hanging out of his trousers, I want to scream, "That's not it, you moron!" People wouldn't care that he went to Eton or if he chose to wear a top hat and morning suit to Parliament if they thought he could understand them and was on their side.

htsteria

I think I agree with Verity - Cameron doesn't get the zeitgeist - at least of this site. Of course we may not represent a majority of the electorate!

Verity

Well, Hysteria, I think we are pretty close to the majority of the Conservative voters, though. This is evidenced by the fact that there is no enthusiasm for Cameron.

Besides the economy, about which he knows nothing, Conservative voters want immigration and the EU tackled, two issues on which Cameron apparently doesn't have an opinion.

egh

Hysteria: "Cameron doesn't get the zeitgeist - at least of this site..." ----- The german ghost word is undoubtedly fashionable, and people probably think it makes them look intelligent and sophisticated. However, isn't it just another affectation? Doesn't it suggest that another language is superior to our own, and that we haven't an expression to equal it in either elegance or significance? Talk about the manifestation of successful Cultural Invasion (a Marxist ploy for deconstruction and ultimate destruction of a country).

At least since Malory's time (Wars of the Roses: a lot of europhiles in charge then, too) -I know that some people in this country have tended to the new-fangled. However, we're also an ancient people, and we are deeply rooted in values that don't fall about worshipping 'fashion.' Do we then, need to resolve a case of sublime and ridiculous?

If so, instead of all the foreign theory and pseudo-intellectual posing - and the vocabulary that goes with it - maybe the politicians need to get in touch with the realities of the British and our condition? Maybe the BNP are a little more sensitive to that than the sappy-soppy 'professionals' who, under their image-making masks, are working for our traditional enemies?

So, for once in my life - I'm agreeing with Verity: "People wouldn't care that he went to Eton or if he chose to wear a top hat and morning suit to Parliament if they thought he could understand them and was on their side."

I'd just add that I think our so-called parliamentarians are a bit of a closed shop. This may sometimes work in industry; but government isn't industry, and the policy clearly isolates the Masters from the lives and liberties and interests of the British populace. How about a two-pronged approach then? Let them learn who and what the British are; and let them learn the meaning of 'represent'?

MahatmaCoat

EGH - I think the parliamentarians do know what and who we are and they don't like us, in fact they hate us. That is the only explanation I have for their behaviour over the past 30 years or so. I can't think why, but the political/media class loath their fellow countrymen/women. This is just one of the reasons why they adore immigrants and foreigners of every stripe, even those who just want to murder us. This is the main reason why the BNP is making such great progress, to the surprise and consternation of the said political/media class.

Verity

MahatmaCoat - I agree and tried to post a link to bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com This individual has many well-known bloggers posting on his very interesting site.

Nicholas

"A very interesting post posted at 6:31 p.m. and yet, at 2:50 a.m. the following day has only had three comments? Eight hours and three comments?"

Moderation seems to go into slow motion from long lunch on Friday, through sleepy Friday afternoon until Monday, but stops again for another long lunch. Also there seems to be one moderator who cuts most posts and another who doesn't.

The usual convention is for an interesting post to remain comment-free until a new post appears then the comments on the old post finally appear too. The focus seems to be about 3-4 posts in arrears but I think the problem is that the moderation is just too slow. Either the guy(s)/gal(s) is/are overworked or it depends on how much red wine and port has been quaffed by the moderator/moderation team during his/her/their long lunch.

Also for egh, 'zeitgeist' is not a new word. I have seen and heard it used in mainstream English for at least 30 years if not longer. It is a useful word too, having a phonetic strength and nothing quite having the same meaning in English. You will see from the Wiki entry here that it takes a lot of words to convey the same meaning in English:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist

Verity

I agree with Nicholas that the one drawback of this otherwise excellent blog is the lack of initiative in getting posts up. The dilatory nature of the moderation drains the immediacy out of even lively threads. Most threads peter out after around 20 comments or less because people have better things to do than keep checking back on whether their comment, or a response, has been posted.

egh

Nicholas - clearly the word is german, and therefore shares the same roots as many English words; a point denoting equality, rather than superiority, I'd have thought. Should I ever want the full etymology, though, I will access more reliable and respectable sources than wikipedia.

As to phonetic strength - doubtless that's along the same lines as 'blitzkrieg'; a factor that may explain part of my resistance. Schriftspracche(?sp) doesn't do much for me, either.

On the semantics of the ghost word: "Spirit of the age" may be a valuable and esoteric concept to you - I personally find it vague. However, I'm sure you believe you've moved in circles superior to my own, and probably think you've read more and better writing to boot; certainly, I don't recall being attacked by the word until about fifteen years ago. Oddly, that's also when other superiors started forbidding my use of 'ghost' instead of the Latinate 'spirit'!

My points that your word is affected and 'fashionable' do not suggest that it has to be younger than 30. The present new-fangledness of Britain has been underway for longer than that, I know.

Anyway - back to the blog. Thanks, Mahatma. The source of the hatred and the division is an interesting question. I wonder if anyone else here has any ideas about that?