Taking a Liberty

This week sees the return of David Davis on the green benches of the Commons after his battle for the protection of our civil liberties.  But through the fields and the towns of the Haltenprice and Howden consituency, the instigators of 42 day detention never turned up to fight their corner.  The Conservatives were the only mainstream party on last Thursday’s ballot paper.  Davis hailed ‘victory’ claiming that he had won the argument pointing to ICM polling showing seven percent of the population had switched their support on extending the time terror suspects can remain under arrest.  Yet still the majority of the population support the government on this issue.

Did David Davis have an impact.  The answer is yes.  In the Commons he fought valiantly in the name of civil liberties but in the end was let down by the Labour backbenchers won round by the Home Secretary and the nine DUP members.  He lost at the backroom political arm-ringing something which he excelled at over a decade ago as one of John Major’s whips.  He was perfectly happy to see the right to remain silent and the obligation suspects have to help the police with their enquiries added to the statute book in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994. 

People do change and Davis’s attacks on the merits of the bill have been impassioned and seem genuine.  But he has not created the debate up in Yorkshire or nationally that he was hoping for.  Despite having twenty-five candidates to debate with the issue of civil liberties was lost with the likes of the Greens and the English democrats who chose to focus on the environment and Britain’s role in Europe.  Jill Saward stood independently on a platform against David Davis’s criticisms of the DNA database and “not saying anything about sexual violence” as shadow home secretary.  She was gang-raped in the eighties and one of the first women to speak openly about what happened.  Yet she came fifth last Thursday behind Miss Great Britain – hardly a bastion of civil liberty or security.  The media pack focused on the extraordinary number of candidates something their more colourful characters like Madcow Girl and the Church of the Militant Elvis Party and why David Davis stood down when the bill is likely to get defeated in the Lords.

Sky News reported that Camronians in the Tory party were eyeing Davis’s job and with Cameron’s twenty point lead in the polls he could finally remove Davis from one of the top jobs in his shadow cabinet.  This seems more likely with David Cameron playing down any chance Davis has of getting a shadow cabinet position.  Appearing on Question Time a couple of weeks ago he humbley answered David Dimbleby’s question of whether he wanted his question by saying “I would love my old job back, but I don’t think it will be offered to me”.  Surely if Davis is as important to the party as Cameron makes him out to be he would simply give him back the position he has served so well.

It seems the Haltenprice and Howden by election was more about backroom politics than civil liberties.  This more of a last hurrah for Davis before returning to the backbenches.  There he could be a large thorn for Cameron able to root into the right-wingers and wait for the Cameronian elan to fade.