David Davis throws down the gauntlet to Brown and the cabinet

David Davis’s Daily Telegraph piece makes clear that he will be running as a Conservative party candidate in the by-election, something about which there has been some confusion. He also presents Brown and his cabinet with this challenge:

I will debate with any one of them – any time, anywhere – what Gordon Brown euphemistically referred to as the “next chapter of British liberty”.

I suspect that Nick Wood is already booking a venue and that Team DD is preparing to ‘empty chair’ the government.

One other thing worth noting is that Davis inadvertently makes clear that Dominic Grieve did get  too forward on his skis in his first set of interviews as shadow Home Secretary. Davis’ version of the party line on 42 days is that he and Cameron agreed that:

a Conservative government would immediately repeal 42 days, in the absence of the most compelling new evidence.

There is already considerable unease in Conservative circles about Grieve’s appointment. I suspect that he will not be in his current role come the next election. There are several reasons for thinking this; not the least of which is that his appointment dangerously upsets the balance of the front bench.

On Andrew Neil’s show, Kelvin Mackenzie revealed that if Labour doesn’t run a candidate he’ll stand against Davis. I suggest that the station masters of Haltemprice and Howden check that their car park charges are reasonable.

PS Just to back up Fraser’s theory, I’m noticing a complete divide among my friends. Those who work in or around politics are all agreed that, at best, David Davis is suffering from a rush of blood to the head. All my ‘civilian’ friends, though, are full of praise for him. The charitable explanation for this split is that those of us who live and breathe politics are thinking two-steps ahead, imagining how Davis is going to look this time next week when he is out of job and the media caravan has moved on to the next story. The alternative is that we in the Westminster village are all hideously out of touch. Time will tell which it is.