The Passion of David Davis

Tony

Do you really think this is good for the Tories? The BBC are already floating the suggestion that this could be an attempt to unseat Cameron as leader. Just when things were going so well.....it now gives the message of no discipline within the party. Labour must be thanking God right now.

Mark

From a review of comments at the BBC, Guardian and Guido, Davies seems to be getting a good reaction across the board. A few say it's cynical or moan about the cost, but most see it as a principled stand.
David Cameron needs to make it clear that he's 100% behind Davies and that - absent the emergence of evidence justifying 42 days in the interval - repeal of this law (if it is passed) will be a manifesto commitment.

And while it's a shame that Gordon Brown's incredible suggestion that no promises were made to secure his majority yesterday, this also prevents Brown from developing his own news agenda.

Overall, a good thing.

Same Old Tories

When people are facing financial crisis, repossession, crime, immigration etc and want to hear answers from the Conservatives, they go and do this. I thought Cameron had 'changed' the party, well that is now coming apart at the seams.

David, London

What an idiot - most of the public support 42 days. The Tories' worst enemy seems to be themselves - we want far more protection from terrorists than this PC government gives us but can the Tories be relied upon to be tough on terrorists, uncontrolled/illegal immigration etc?

Fergus Pickering

Fraser, I think you've got this absolutely right. And there's no need for anyone to rubbish Cameron either. Davis is difficult/impossible to control. Like Churchill, I'm not saying Davis is Churchill, of course heisn't. But LIKE Churchill in this respect. And he's right. This is more important than a few footling years as Home Secretary. After all, people like Blunkett and Straw have had that.

Prodicus

Now get him to write a full article in the magazine. Please.

Wilfred

David Davis has a lot to say about the Magna Carta and its granting of ancient liberties to nobles, yet his action today makes a mockery of our more hard-won, if more recent, traditions of parliamentary democracy. He refuses to tolerate the results of a properly-conducted vote in parliament, and he plays around with the constitution by using the by-election process as a publicity stunt, thereby costing the taxpayer millions and showing contempt for the electors, whom he treats as ego-fodder. And wasn't Davis cunning in getting Clegg to stand down before announcing his resignation? This was both a cowardly reduction of risk (he can't lose the election now) and a subversion of parliamentary democracy. Perhaps the Queen should get involved and protect our constitution by preventing Davis from standing.

Robert Simpson

As ever, an invaluable article by Fraser shedding light on one of the most unusual acts by a British politician in a long time.

However, one thing I'm unclear on from reading all the blogs is whether Davis is standing as a Conservative or as an Independent, and whether this really makes any difference? Surely he can't stand as the Conservative candidate if he's only campagning on civil liberties?

John Adams

Hmmm - I hear what you are saying but a heartfelt and principled empty gesture is still an empty gesture.

Apart from anything else, it's up to the electorate to decide on what issues they vote. David Davies can't simply tell people on what basis they ought to be voting - Ted Heath tried that in 1974 and failed miserably.

Max Kaye

Davis deserves all the admiration and support the (non political class) public are now heaping on him (just look at the non-aligned websites and blogs).

In this instance Cameron made the right choice, as Admiral Bates says to Casey Ryeback in that silly but fun file 'Under Siege': "Because if I goddamn can't control you, I might as well support you. Correct?"

Telegrpah reader

The Telegraph are right when they say 'Brown was on the floor and Davis has just helped him up'.

Annoyed

I cannot believe this has the Tory party taken leave of it's senses?? Just when Brown was on the ropes, he has now been given a reprieve. The media has now been given the narrative they crave:

'Tories in disarray' and 'Tories are split'.

And DOMINIC GRIEVE as a replacement, PATHETIC!

Chingford Man

Flip, no wonder all you beltway courtiers are so perplexed. It must be odd coming across a politician who is prepared to sacrifice a stab at high office for his principles.

I bet DD will be deluged by public support in the real world (do you journos know where it is?), not least out of surprise that a modern politician would stand up for his beliefs, even at the possible cost of his career.

Kevyn Bodman

'Cameron is furious.' That's your point 4.
There's agreat line in Jerry McGuire, spoken by Cuba Gooding Jr's character,'Well, boo (expletive deleted) hoo.'

Fraser, I've just seen you being interviewed by Jeremy Thompson on SKYNEWS. Why did you talk about Davis' future on the front bench.
It's clear to me that a Cabinet job is not as important to him as it is to a run-of-the-mill politician.

Lokk at points 1 and 2, Davis means it, and that's not weird unless viewed by someone corrupted by exposure to the sleazy self-serving actions of the vast majority of politicians.
And it's not just about 42 days.

Verity

Hero.

Clarence

If Davis hadn't, as a Government whip, rammed the Maastricht Treaty through the House we'd all be *a hell of a lot* freer. The 42-day limit (remember, it's already 28 days) is as nothing compared to rule by those we cannot eject.

Full Steam Ahead

I applaud with Mr Davis.

I think his message will resonate with all fair minded folk.

haldane

Read John Redwood's blog

Craig Strachan

If Davis feels so strongly about the damage the Government has done to British civil liberties, he should channel his feelings into the effort to replace the Government.

If he were a member of the Government, his current course of action would seem honorable.

As he's a member of the Opposition, it just seems odd.

Emma

He means every word and thats why they, the media, will rip him apart.

wonderfulforhisage

More power to his elbow, say I. Let's hope his stand encourages a few more politicians to act on their principles.

I'm fed up with unprincipled spin and spivery from both the major parties.

Seems to me that the Tories elected the wrong leader. Understandable I suppose as they were so mesmerised by Bliar's apparent invincibility that they chose a clone.

If DD were to leave the Tories and form a party I'd follow. He's a true leader, not a follower of focus groups like most of the rest of them.

June Mc

Fraser, thank you for your fantastic blog (above). As always we can rely on you for thorough explanation and analysis of what's happening.

Bishop Brennan

Davis is spot on. It's time to make a stand for our liberties against this evil, authoritarian, unaccountable, unelected Government

GiantRabbit

When you read some of the posts here you realise how pathetic, self-centred and small-minded the elite of this society has become during the Labour years.

Are you now so morally corrupted that you cannot see INTEGRITY when the real thing is before you. You make me sick.

The man is a bloody hero - and you just cannot see it. Davis, may the FORCE be with you.

Carol-Ann

Why do the leadership and frontbench not understand Brown is RIGHT on this issue. The public support him and want tough terror laws. There are so many other, much more important issues to people at large, that the Tories could take a stand against Brown on. This is sheer madness!

STAN, UK

Cameron is off his head! Allowing Davis to go banging on about CCTV, DNA databases, 42 days detention is lunacy. The public support government policy on these issues that is why they have elected them at the last three general elections!

PATHETIC

This is a kamakazee mission and has now just highlighted the tories as being out of touch and fundamentalist. All the good work that has been done to make us electable again has just been ruined. I am very annoyed!

Alex

Surely this shows that 42 days was a very clever "political" decision by Brown, as it is the Tories that look divided now not Labour.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, until reading this post I was, after reading the rest of today's posts by The Spoeccie hacks, ready to have a real blast at the lot of you for, predictably as I would see it, peddling the Cameron line. Your summary does, though, seem admirably balanced and I respect and thank you for it.

First, though, let me clarify one thing - I would be amazed if UKIP put up a candidate and, indeed, have every expectation that they will very happily lend every support they can to DD. I would be distressed if they didn't. I note, though, the usual CCHQ Tory smear of adjoining UKIP to the BNP and Monster Loonies.

Where this will go politically is unknown, and I fear, to a great extent in the hands of you lot - the media.

What was entirely apparent from DD's statement was that the issue was not simply 42 days but the whole attack on our personal freedoms by the Labour State and I'm sure he intended this to include not just the legislative measures but the whole repressive PC agenda a large part of which has been so enthusiastically embraced by your editor's Best Mate.

While this is never a top of the agenda issue in the pubs etc, it's a recurring theme and something which causes great resentment and unease outside Islington and Notting Hill. With coverage DD might, therefore, have lit a blue touch paper, without and it could be the damp squib some have categorized it as.

On the big political stage it matters hugely. As, I posted last night, following his "victory" Gordon last night would have been ready to move his tanks out with major initiatives to seize the agenda back on the run up to the Summer recess. With coverage of the DD freedom question that would be derailed completely.

However, politics is frequently about the personal and while I have little doubt that DD is heartily glad to be freed from Dave, Dave will be even more glad to see the back of DD, hence the lightening appointment of Grieve. From that point of view Dave's and Gordon's interests coincide quite perfectly.

We should expect, therefore, every attempt to be made by Labour and the Tories and their media surrogates to ignore this issue and the by-election.

However, to all you Freedom Lovers I hold out one big hope. DD is a fighter and a hardened battle strategist so he will have anticiapated this unholy alliance of Dave and Gordon, so the likes of d'Ancona, Finkelstein and the BBC might not be able to bury this issue quite as easily as Dave and Godrdon might wish.

Verity

Westminster Village is not surrended by a freeway, so could we stop the wanabee use of the word "beltway"?

We say Westminster Village in Britain. Pathetic.

Silly episode

This silly episode has allowed the likes of Tony McNulty to be all over the media denouncing tories as eccentric and Cameron's leadership being in meltdown. Why oh why????

tone1201

If DD is so madly keen on civil liberties, why did he vote in favour of extending detention without charge to 28 days a couple of yeears ago?

Working Class, Welsh and Proud of it...

Fraser, since you are Scottish I would have hoped for better than using quasi-yankee terms like 'beltway'. Maybe you've had a cup of coffee and a 'cookie' tonight whilst curled up on the couch watching a 'movie'. Come along now, sunshine, speak in English...

A good analysis of Mr Davis, but the tricky thing on all this '42 days' issue is that by electing to be in favour of '28 days' as a way of deflecting Tony Blair's stupid '90 days' pitch, it does rather leave him [and others] a little compromised when talking about 'ancient liberties'.

That said, I take my hat off to the guy, because he is taking on the Daily Mail, with their vapid 'anti-human rights, down with the civil liberties' agenda, and the Dacre/Gordo Axis Of Evil.

That is a 'big ask' and looks a bit foolish, but then if you are going to take on Goliath, it may help a lot that your name is David...

Go for it, my son..

TGF UKIP

Haldane, thanks you for your advice. Unmissable and it signals thatit ain't going to be easy for Dave to bury either DD or the issue.

Wonderfulforhisage, hear, hear, hear, hear!

Peter

Cameron might be furious, but if there were more of David Davis's stamp more of us might join. Mr Davis might have started something. Westminster and its cosy parasitic hacks might not like the people of England rallying to a man of principle.

Alan Clayton

Personally, I really don't care about the effect this has on the Tory party, or indeed on any political battle.

For people like me, law abiding and reasonably normal, but in sympathy with DD regarding the gradual erosion of what we stand for, this is a blessing.

We have not been heard because we have no organisation. Now we have somebody to rally round. I think DD should leave the Tory party and lead the movement of those who take time to think beyond the ever preaching 24 hour news and truly realise what we are slowly giving away piece by piece.

And so it starts. I hope.

J Berry

breath of fresh air

Gareth

For a moment I thought the title read "The Passion of the David Davis".

Good on him for at least trying to spark a debate on the vast State apparatus that Labour have constructed.

Steve Wilson

If he is re-elected solely on the 42 day issue then it will be a vote of no confidence in Gordon Brown (and the whole ivory tower Westminster political process) from the people, if only a small portion of them. A good move I think.
He also sets himself up as a more principled and credible future leader of the Conservative party than "Dave"

Wilfred

And the latest news is that Kelvin McKenzie is going to stand as an independent, pro-security candidate against Davis, with Labour probably not bothering to stand, but tacitly supporting McKenzie. Now the Tories are really screwed. And the word on the street, according to McKenzie, is that it's all down to the old Tory class obsession, with Davis being "iced" (frozen out) by the Etonians. The Tories are doomed. I'd rather have a "ditherer" (aka cool, thoughtful strategist) running the government than a vanity-driven hothead like Davis.

Johnny Fiston-Hewes

To Mark, 5.35pm

'this also prevents Brown from developing his own news agenda.

Overall, a good thing'

Are you mentally ill? It may earn Davis the respect of some (maybe even many) but its a shocker for the party - Cameron and Coulson are reportedly livid.

Omar

Perhaps DD should be detained in solitary for 42 days at Tory Party Headquarters under suspicion of a suicide plot to blow up the party's election chances...

David Short

"My sense is that Davis has faith that the natural gravity of Westminster will take him back to the top. "

Shome mishtake shurely?

Gravity taking you up?

David Short

I know The Spectator is now under the control of a 1980s old hat Scot who vulgarised the Sunday Times for £50k a year, but please don't forget there still are people who believe that politicians should stand up for the principle of freedom.

Alan Douglas

As someone who a few years back was locked up for 7 hours for returning a ticket to a traffic warden - she called it "assault", I am fully behind Davis. The state has been treating the public as the ENEMY for most of Labour's time, enough is enough.

Alan Douglas

cuffleyburgers

We are still getting postings here from people (Lenin's useful idiots) saying things like "we need more protection from terrorists" etc blah blah

You haven't got it have you? The 42 days has NOTHING to do with terror (except Mr Brown's terror of going down in history as a pathetic failure, but he will anyway) and everything to do with tactics.

Nobody in this country is any safer as a result of that disgraceful bought vote (Wilfred - really you should know better than to characterise it as a "properly-conducted vote in parliament" - financially facilitated gerrymandate more like) and Mr Davis is right to draw attention to the erosion of civil liberties - Now he is out of the shadow cabinet he can point out that New Labour is indeed doing the terrorists' work for them.

Might seem an exaggeration, surely terrorists kill dozens of people? Labour's incompetence has led to the unnecessary death of dozens of soldiers and hundreds of patients in filthy hospitals. Mr Blair's decision to surrender our EU rebate without securing the slightest advantage in terms of reforming even the most egregious failings of the CAP mean that that disastrous policy is still contributing to the deaths of thousands of the most vulnerable in Africa who might otherwise be able to trade their way out of trouble.

My seem extreme, but I am not alone in supposing that the New labour project has done more damage to our country than Alky Edda, or whatever the Dear Leader calls it, can EVER do in a hundred years.

albert hall

St George is alive and well.

Jabez Bunting

Am I the only one who cannot fathom David Davis' decision regardless of whether I agree with him on the issue of 42 days or not?

Surely he'd be better off fighting the civil liberties issues from his position in the official opposition?

Most importantly, doesn't his decision trigger an otherwise needless by-election? On this basis, I cannot see why public funds should be used to administer the election; nor can I see how anyone can justify the disruption to the educational and community life of East Yorkshire as schools, village and church halls are paid for, hired and used as polling stations.

Perhaps the real issue in this by-election is should Council Tax payers' money (no doubt from "hard working families") to fund a personal political stunt?

Colin

Its about time an MP stood up and said this because it's going to far.
We are sleep walking into a Police state , we're practically there now!
in this once proud nation their is too much "sinister control freak legislation".
All rubber stamped by ghastly little career Politicians who care for nothing
but their own greedy ambition and hide behind the faceless authoritarianism of the...
"BIG GOVERNMENT".

Well played sir!

Stephen

The protection of freedom was a key reason for us entering the last war and for the consequent spilling of so much of our blood. Its slow erosion over time is a less spectacular threat to us than a Hitler, but if left unchecked over time equally deadly. Thank God for a politician who is prepared to put his future on the line in such a cause. Are we so cynical that we cannot accept someone really is still prepared to act on what they really believe, when it’s something so important, and hang the personal risk? At least that’s a freedom we still have, even if we’re slow to recognise it.

Watervole

Fraser - totally agree with you, well put.

Fergus, I also agree with you.

It is time for someone to say "enough is enough" and I support David Davis' action wholeheartedly and do not see it as a departure, but rather an endorsement of the conservative approach.

David Davis has raised the game for politicians, though it may well turn out to be an act of self-sacrifice, played out on a Churchillian scale. NO dithering there, and the media are naive to think this was played out without Cameron's support.

We who are about to lose all our freedoms, salute him. I hope the Queen knights him!

We should march on Downing Street and call for a General Election now!

Terry H

I agree that this man is making a fine stand instead of towing the line.At some time in our lives we have to make a stand for what is right..and I believe this is right!
If we need a man of principle to lead the nation(and we do),then David Davis could be that man in the extraordinary times in which we live.I'm fed up of "wet" politicians who suck up to Brussels with all it's evil little goings on and bleeding our land of its very life!
Just maybe we have someone who will make a stand across the board!I pray we do before it's too late!

Wilfred

Watervole: "march on Downing Street"?
This is precisely Davis's mistake. You Tories are beginning to look like '60s flower-power refuseniks. I thought Cameron was trying to create the illusion that you people could be trusted with government. You've blown it. We live in a representative democracy. You didn't like the result of the vote in the Commons, but Davis used to whip his Tory parliamentarians with the same ruthlessness. That's the British way, Watervole.

Ian Parker

The polls say that most people agree with the 42 days, I believe that this is only because people have not heard the full arguments. The media coverage has been all about how Brown can get the vote through not on a detailed critique of the bill. Now because of David Davis and his principled stand we will hear all the arguments in full and I feel that public oppinion will turn against 42 days and the loss of our liberty.

Wilfred

Ian Parker, I still don't understand Davis's position in supporting 28 days but not 42. Where was the cut-off point in his tolerance of detention, 35 days perhaps? And why? More importantly, why did he (and his party) support INDEFINITE detention (forget 42 days) for IRA suspects, who were much less dangerous than today's jihadist mass-murderers?

Watervole

Wilfred - that wasn't a vote in the Commons, it was an auction, with the Mother of all Parliaments going to the highest bidder. The call to action is valid as the democratic process has been hijacked by this government: first no General Election by the bottler-in-chief; second the purchase of the DUP; third, the partiality of the Speaker; fourth, no Referendum (and thank God for the Irish); and finally ID cards. And you call this a representative democracy? Don't make me laugh. It used to be once and hopefully with David Davis' stance, it will be again. All power to him.

Clearly you are still living in the Dark Ages and so is Gordon Brown. Didn't you hear the Berlin Wall came down some time ago as eastern europe realised that centralist government simply doesn't work.