The Tories’ lost leader

David Davis is the ghost at the coalition’s feast

And then, somewhere behind the arras, there is David Davis. Every Conservative party conference has an arras, and this year’s arras is a very pretty one, embroidered in sky blue and a pale yellow the shade of stale egg yolks, hardly yellow at all, depicting a touching scene from the award-winning homoerotic film Brokeback Mountain.

David Davis, a twice-failed leadership candidate, but a man somehow still in touch with the soul of the party, is somewhat less the focus of dissent right now than some expected him to be, although these are early days, of course. There is always someone behind the arras at Tory conferences — making acetic or embittered speeches at some fringe meeting, queuing up for the Today programme mobile studio, writhing with transgressed dignity. They are rarely so compelling a politician as Davis, though. Nor so canny.

Davis, unlike many on that distrait right-wing of the party he is oddly presumed to inhabit, supported the creation of the coalition, despite his famous Brokeback Mountain quip, a joke made in the first moments of that Cameron-Clegg joyous coming together. ‘Under those circumstances, yes, it was absolutely the right thing to do. In fact David (Cameron) called me to talk about it,’ he says, not mentioning that he was, when questioned about it at the time, more wry and humorous about the whole shebang than fervent for its success. There is a sweet irony, though: the one thing that cleaves the Lib Dems close to the Tories is the so-called liberty agenda, forged almost singlehandedly by David Davis. Without that there would be no ideological common purpose: Cameron has Davis to thank for the moral, if not pragmatic, support of many Lib Dems.