Tories aghast as Davis quits to wage lone war on 42 days
When Gordon Brown managed to push through his bill, which allowed the 42 day detention of suspected terrorists without charge, using the support of the Ulster Unionists to secure his victory, he couldn't possibly have predicted what would happen next.
The shadow home secretary, David Davis, stunned David Cameron by announcing he was resigning his seat yesterday. He said he intended to fight a byelection designed to stop "the insidious and relentless erosion of civil liberties in Britain", symbolised by the Commons' decision to back the extension of pre-charge detention to 42 days.
Many of Davis's colleagues felt he had made a unilateral and serious error of judgment and accused him of self-indulgently destabilising the Tory leader at the very moment Gordon Brown was on the rack over his handling of the 42 day issue.
But Davis told the Guardian: "I want Labour to debate this pre-eminent issue. If they think we are soft on terror, or my arguments don't run with ordinary people, then turn up at the byelection and prove it. If they don't come, we will have the campaign anyway, and find people to argue both sides of the debate."
I've never heard anything like it. I remember John Major resigning to force his recalcitrant backbenchers to "put up or shut up" over Europe, but for a shadow cabinet member to resign only to put himself immediately back up for re-election is simply unheard of.
I happen to agree with him that the 42 day detention bill is an affront to our civil liberties and, as he says, goes against Habeas Corpus and the Magna Carta; but I find David Davis a strange bedfellow and am suspect to find him on our side of the street.
What does he hope to gain? To be re-elected as an MP in the exact same seat and claim that this somehow proves that the public opposes the 42 day detention bill? He's in a seat which has already chosen him as their representative, how likely is it that they will choose someone else anyway? Especially as the Liberals have said that they will not put forward a candidate - out of support for Davis and his position - and the Labour party are also unlikely to put forward a candidate as that would play into Davis's game plan.
So he is actually likely to have a by-election against himself and a few fringe groups.
Don't get me wrong, I am vehemently against the 42 day detention bill and, as I have said before, I regard it as a horrendous attack on our civil liberties. However, I am still flummoxed as to what Davis actually hopes to achieve with the stance he has taken.
There's just something ever so slightly nutty about this.
Masking his anger, Cameron described the Davis bombshell, relayed to him late on Wednesday night, as "a very courageous and brave decision". "But it is a personal decision and not one of the shadow cabinet, or the Conservative party," he said.
The Liberty director, Shami Chakrabarti, tried to persuade Davis he was making a tactical error in the hours after the vote on Wednesday night. She told him he wielded more influence by leading the attack on government policy from the front bench. She feared he had been caught up in the emotion of the moment.
I am all for people resigning on points of principle, and was firmly behind Robin Cook when he stood down from the Labour front bench because he opposed the government's decision to invade Iraq. However, Cook was resigning because of the actions of his own government. Davis is resigning because of the actions of a government which he is not a part of.
It smacks of a political stunt. And, although I agree that the law he is resigning to highlight is a dreadful one, I can't help but think that there's something utterly pointless in the stance which he is taking. If he wins, he proves nothing. So what in God's name is this for?
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