Smoke And Mirrors
It has now been a week since David Davis made the surprise announcement that he intended to stand down as an MP and fight a by-election on the issue of the Government’s ‘42 days’ bill.
As a man of principle, unlike so many of our useless Members of Parliament, Mr Davis has put his beliefs and country before his political career and for that should be applauded. As a result Labour are running scared and have refused to field a candidate to help defend their stance.
Unsurprisingly, Gordon Brown has attempted to label Mr Davis’ resignation as a crude stunt while various Government Ministers have said the by-election to be a waste of tax payers’ money and are calling for Mr Davis to pay for its costs – which is curious since the Labour party under Brown and Blair have carelessly wasted billions on various crackpot schemes and initiatives, so are hardly in a position to lecture anyone else on the use of public funds.
However, while Mr Davis is undoubtedly a man of principle and a strong opponent of this Government’s continual attacks on our civil liberties, there is almost certainly more to his resignation than meets the eye. This is as much about the political direction of the Conservative party as it is about Government legislation.
I very much suspect, though of course I have no proof, that David Davis quit the Shadow Cabinet and publicly announced that he was standing down as an MP because, behind the scenes, David Cameron had not promised to repeal Labour’s ‘42 days’ bill if the Conservatives were to form the next Government.
I say this because I think Cameron’s private reaction to ’42 days’ was probably very similar to his initial responses concerning a post-ratification referendum of the Lisbon Treaty where he chose to avoid taking any real stance (now he has grudgingly admitted that such a referendum would be ‘impossible’,) or the way he has carefully manoeuvred into giving a ‘free vote’ on the repeal of Labour’s useless and class-hatred inspired Hunting Act, rather than an unequivocal pledge to abolish it.
Cameron’s likely refusal to abolish the ’42 days’ legislation was probably the last straw for Mr Davis whose views on this issue and many others have been out of step with David Cameron’s new brand of politics for some considerable time now. By resigning his seat and position as Shadow Home Secretary, Mr Davis forced Cameron and the newly appointed Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve out of their silence and into making a public promise to repeal the legislation.
Yet, by resigning his Parliamentary seat and therefore turning the focus on Labour, David Davis has rather cleverly saved the Conservative party from a great deal of embarrassment and media scrutiny. Had he just quit the Shadow Cabinet, the media speculation would have been about the potential split between Cameron and Davis whereas now it is about the issue of civil liberties and Labour’s poor record on this front.
What’s more, another reason Mr Davis may have resigned was that he has rapidly tired of being a sort of John Prescott style figure for the Conservatives whose only purpose was to keep the tribal and gullible voting Tory in spite of the fact the party lacks any actual semblance of conservatism.
As things stand it looks likely that David Davis will be re-elected as Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden. Yet, even if this is the case he will not retake the position of Shadow Home Secretary. But, as he acknowledges, this is not important. The main target was to force David Cameron and the Conservative party into pledging to repeal Labour’s ’42 days’ bill, which he has achieved. President John F. Kennedy once said that:
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
For David Davis, the cost of our freedom (if the Conservatives do indeed form a government and repeal Labour’s legislation) came at a high personal price to his short-term political prospects – but he was willing to pay it and not surrender his beliefs, and for that I am sure many people in this country will be very grateful.
