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A Conservative With Principles?
Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has resigned as an MP in protest against the passing of the 42 day "detention without trial" anti-terror law passed last night.
He will fight a by-election in his constituency of Haltemprice and Howden; the Liberal Democrats have indicated they will not contest the seat. Davis said, "Up until yesterday I took the view that what we did in the House of Commons, representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because with centuries of forebears we defended the freedoms of the British people - well we did up until yesterday."
The 42 day detention, he added, was "the most salient example of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms."
Party leader David Cameron is reportedly unsettled by Davis' move; the pair are said to have had a blazing row over policy on the 42 day issue yesterday. Davis is understood to have said that if the Conservatives win the next election they will bin the law; Cameron says this is not the party's policy.
Why fight the law, if this is the case?
It makes Cameron's opposition to the 42 day detention law cynical and opportunistic. Why spend such energies campaigning against the law if you will keep it in place following your election? A refusal to abolish such a controversial law amounts to a commitment to keep it, in our book; therefore instead of taking advantage of Brown's political difficulties and unpopularity to score points, Cameron should have supported the government. Indeed, allowing the law to pass only with the support of the opposition could have weakened Brown further.
If Brown is weakened, Cameron looks unprincipled. Davis, who was Cameron's chief opponent for Conservative leadership in 2005, comes out looking like one of Britain's few "conviction politicians."
Labour, however, is dismissing Davis's resignation as a "childish" stunt and "political theatre." Others in the government claim that the Tories are "in disarray" - rather unconvincing, this, when one considers that it was the government which had to scrap policy and principle in order to buy support for the 42 day act, and even then had to rely on the votes of their old enemies the Democratic Unionists of Ulster.
"Behind Cameron's facade are the same old Tories fighting like ferrets in a sack", claimed "communities secretary" Hazel Blears; indeed, the move by Davis could well speed a split in Tory ranks, though on past form it is unlikely such a divide will appear along libertarian lines - Davis himself was once the champion of grass roots law'n'order Conservatives, while Cameron was thought to represent liberal metropolitans on the centre right.
Civil rights group Liberty praised Davis: Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said: "MPs of all parties hold courage and conviction about these values and few more so than David Davis."
