David Davis's vanity has boosted the enemies of liberty

Dominic Grieve has pledged that the Tories will give the police more unregulated surveillance powers if they win the next election.

After David Davis won his fatuous by-election victory at Haltemprice & Howden, I wrote:

Dominic Grieve, who has taken Davis's job in the Tory shadow cabinet, has an honourable record of fighting for liberty in the Commons. Yet you sense he is a good lawyer who has done the best he can with the brief he has been given. If the balance of power in that shadow cabinet changes or David Cameron changes his mind about where advantage lies, Grieve will argue against liberty just as effectively.

And, of course, Davis's absence from the shadow cabinet makes it more likely that the balance of power will change and that the likes of Liam Fox and Michael Gove, who would feel happier attacking the government for not being Neo Con enough, will be the decisive influences on Cameron.

And I said more pithily on the New Statesman site:

And what has David Davis achieved by his resignation? If you care about liberty, then shadow home secretary looks quite a useful job to have.

His action looks more and more like an outbreak of the male menopause. He should have bought himself a sports car instead.

It is now clear that Davis's political suicide bombing damaged his career and - far more important - has made it easier for the enemies of liberty in the Conservative Party (a club with a large and thriving membership) to prevail.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Small by-election, not many hurt

To no one's great surprise David Davis regained his seat at Haltemprice & Howden.

Liberal Democrats will be relieved that, though the Greens came second, they obviously did not pick up our habitual voters by the handful. And it was reassuring to see Jill Saward, who supported the Labour/Daily Mail anti-liberty line, do badly. The 110 votes David Icke won suggest he finds it easier to win votes in cyberspace than he does in prosperous parts of rural Yorkshire.

When it was first announced that the Liberal Democrats would not stand against David Davis, people queued up to praise Nick Clegg's sagacity. Most notable was James Hook, who wrote:

I’m so proud of Nick Clegg for his decision that Liberal Democrats will not contest David Davis’ by-election.

Jon Neal, our superb candidate last time, came so close that I am sure we could win the by-election; even after the human and financial burdens of Crewe and Henley.

Detention without trial is a threat to our national life and it is right for Nick to support David Davis’ courageous stance.

Since then enthusiasm for Nick's decision has cooled. In particular, it has been noticed that the Lib Dems won no concessions from Davis in return for not fighting him and made no effort to turn his campaign into a joint one. So much so that James Graham has written on Comment is Free today that: "The main loser of this episode seems to have been Nick Clegg."

I think the main losers are David Davis and the prospects of keeping the Tories signed up for the civil liberties agenda. Before he resigned Davis was shadow home secretary and had every chance of being home secretary after the next election. Today he is a backbencher.

Meanwhile the big debate on civil liberties have taken place, not in Haltemprice & Howden, but at Westminster. As Martin Kettle argues in the Guardian today, that debate took place in the House of Lords and Eliza Manningham-Buller's speech was the most important.

Dominic Grieve, who has taken Davis's job in the Tory shadow cabinet, has an honourable record of fighting for liberty in the Commons. Yet you sense he is a good lawyer who has done the best he can with the brief he has been given. If the balance of power in that shadow cabinet changes or David Cameron changes his mind about where advantage lies, Grieve will argue against liberty just as effectively.

And, of course, Davis's absence from the shadow cabinet makes it more likely that the balance of power will change and that the likes of Liam Fox and Michael Gove, who would feel happier attacking the government for not being Neo Con enough, will be the decisive influences on Cameron.

And the Liberal Democrats?

We have failed to gain any advantage from the by-election but seem not to have suffered any permanent damage in one of our target seats. In the absence of any explanation from out leader, it is hard to resist the suspicion that our main reason for not fighting the Haltemprice & Howden by-election is that we were broke and knackered after Henley and decided to let David Davis get on with trashing his career without us.

Has Nick Clegg explained anywhere his decision not to fight David Davis?

I only ask because I want to know.

My Howden days

The television news is reporting on the Church of England Synod, which is taking place at the University of York. The pictures are just as I remember the campus: all ducks, willow trees and a central hall that looks as though it has just landed from outer space.

It seems it is still called the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, despite its late patron's spot of bother over Guinness and Distillers.

Those pictures remind me that in the days (1978-81) when I was an undergraduate at York, the campus was in the Howden constituency. For reasons no one quite understood, the Liberals traditionally finished second there.

I recall handing out a leaflet during the 1979 general election. It showed a wrecking ball labelled Lib knocking down a rickety building labelled Con. The idea was to get Labour students to vote Liberal.

Trivia: Leading Lib Dem blogger Mary Reid and I both have Philosophy degrees from York.

Haltemprice & Howden: Those nutters in full

The BBC has a guide to all 26 candidates in the by-election.

David Davis refuses to debate civil liberties

David Davis, you will recall, resigned his Commons seat and resigned as shadow home secretary because he said he wanted to draw public attention to the threat that government poses to our liberties. According to one of his rival candidates. the by-election campaign is not working out like that.

Shan Oakes, the Green Party candidate in Howden, has written this on her blog today:

Civil liberties suddenly became an immediate issue in the constituency today! We were excluded from a meeting that David Cameron and David Davis had set up with members of the East Riding of Yorkshire Youth Assembly and a number of Conservative supporters.

I had previously been emailed by the Youth Assembly organiser to ask if I would attend an Assembly meeting to discuss the issues with David Davis. I had replied saying I would be delighted. I have attended several Assembly meetings - which are usually held in Beverley where I live. I had also requested David Davis to include us in meetings to debate the issues to which he had agreed.

We turned up at the school and were kept out. First we were refused entrance to the site, then, after great debate with the Head, we were allowed into a side room with the promise that we could meet the young people after the Tory meeting. Chris Abbott, the head teacher, was very helpful, but had little control over arrangements for the 'private hire' of a room in the school premises. We were horrified at the high degree of police presence and the fact that our promised discussion with the young people had been hijacked and turned into a one party PR event for the Tories with no opportunity for legitimate debate.

Davis's behaviour does not make me feel any warmer about Nick Clegg's decision not to fight the by-election.

David Davis will face 25 other candidates

The BBC reports that there will be 26 (count 'em) candidates on the ballot paper for the Haltemprice & Howden by-election.

Not quite what David Davis had in mind when he resigned to fight his crusade, I suspect.

Green Party names candidate for Haltemprice & Howden

Another Green World reports that, after some internal debate, the Green Party is to field a candidate in the Haltemprice & Howden by-election.

Her name is Shan Oakes and she writes on her blog:

I'm looking forward to highlighting the Tories' hypocrisy on civil liberties.

Isn't that what the Liberal Democrats should be doing?

Later. That is a bit glib. What we should be doing is pointing out that, while David Davis holds admirable views on liberty, there are many in his party who do not share them. We should also be exposing the way that Conservative taxation policies will favour the rich.

David Icke to stand in Haltemprice & Howden by-election

Last week I reported that Icke was thinking of standing in David Davis's by-election.

Now his website is saying that David Icke will definitely stand.

Time, perhaps, to remember Terry Wogan's finest hour...

House Points: Press barons, by-elections and David Davis

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Incidentally, if Bowles was the grandfather of the Mitford sisters then he must be a kinsman of our own Rupert Redesdale.

The Yellow Press

The prospect of Kelvin Mackenzie standing in Haltemprice and Howden on behalf of Rupert Murdoch reminds Leicestershire historians of the Harborough by-election of 1916. There, though there was a wartime truce between the main parties, the Liberal candidate Percy Harris (now best remembered as Matthew Taylor’s great-grandfather) faced a formidable opponent financed by the press baron Lord Northcliffe.

Thomas Gibson Bowles was the illegitimate son of a cabinet minister, the founder of Vanity Fair and The Lady, and the grandfather of the Mitford sisters. He had sat for King’s Lynn as both a Liberal and a Conservative. He stood in Harborough to protest against the Asquith government’s conduct of the war.

Percy Harris wrote in his memoirs: "The hoardings were covered with Daily Mail posters, ‘Buy Daily Mail and vote for Bowles,’ and a special issue of the Daily Mirror, then in Northcliffe’s hands, was published and delivered free to the voters."

Many thought Harris had no chance, "But I was young and energetic and kept to the front the query: ‘Were the electors to select their own MP or have one dictated to them by the Yellow Press?’ and a very effective question it was." So effective that Harris won by 4000 votes.

Now Kelvin Mackenzie is backing away from the contest and David Davis may find himself fighting just the Miss Great Britain Party. But should he be facing a Liberal Democrat?

David Cameron's strategy since becoming Tory leader has been to convince the world you can be a reasonable person - concerned about the environment and civil liberties - and still vote Conservative.

You may say amounts to little more than being in favour of motherhood and apple pie. But as Danny Finkelstein has pointed out, the Tories spent a decade giving every impression of being against motherhood and apple pie. So this marks considerable progress for them.

Now David Davis has taken it into his head to resign and fight a by-election on civil liberties. And the Lib Dems have stood aside to let him make the issue entirely his own. It is hard to see how that will help us win or keep the support of the liberally minded people Cameron is wooing. We should be standing in the by-election.

David Icke to stand in Haltemprice & Howden?

Well he's thinking about it.

Those possible Haltemprice & Howden candidates in full

Labour and the Liberal Democrats may not be standing, but there could still be a colourful list of candidates on the ballot paper at Haltemprice & Howden.

The Birmingham Post reports:

Earlier this week, stallholder Eamonn Fitzpatrick, 58, from Northampton, said he would show rival candidates “what politics is all about” by contesting the seat.

Miss Great Britain Gemma Garrett has also announced her interest, asking whether Mr Davis was “a little crazy” to give up his seat for something she described as “a little bit trivial”.

Another potential candidate is the political writer Neil Glass, who has promised to donate half his MP’s salary to charity if elected.

Blackpool pub landlord Hamish Howitt, 55, who is an anti-smoking ban campaigner, is promising to stand up for working class smokers, while the Cleethorpes-based Generalist Party and The Official Monster Raving Loony Party have also announced their intention to field candidates.

When parties ignore elections, press barons move in

The talk of Kelvin MacKenzie (or Kelvin Calder MacKenzie as he would be known to the acting returning officer) standing against David Davis in his by-election reminds me of an earlier posting on this blog.

When the story broke that Matthew Taylor is the great-grandson of Sir Percy Harris, a long-serving Liberal MP, I wrote:

Sir Percy was first elected to the Commons for Harborough at a 1916 by-election. There was an official truce between the parties, but he had to overcome strong opposition from Thomas Gibson Bowles, an Independent candidate backed by Lord Northcliffe and the Daily Mail.

Bowles's campaign seems to have been concerned with criticism of the way the war was being fought. But the moral is clear.

When parties refuse to fight elections, press barons are only to happy to fill the vacuum. The Lib Dems should have put up a candidate in Haltemprice & Howden.

We should put up a candidate against David Davis

Those tensions in the Conservative Party have become public far more quickly than I expected.

David Davis is certainly sincere in his support for civil liberties. It is equally certain that someone like Michael Gove would much rather be supporting 42 days. Meanwhile the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne have no strong opinion on the matter: they just want to see a Conservative government elected.

David Davis's decision to resign and fight a by-election is eccentric, but the announcement that the Liberal Democrats will not be putting up a candidate is bizarre too. If Labour has any sense it will not put up a candidate either, with the result that the only uncertainty over the Haltemprice & Howden by-election will be whether it is UKIP or the BNP that comes second.

The irony is that we would probably have done David Davis more of a favour if we had stood against him. The outside possibility of a Lib Dem victory would have meant more media interest and our presence would have but pressure on Labour to stand too - and suffer inevitable humiliation.

There would also have been more chance of the by-election embarrassing the Conservatives as the press obsessed about which of his shadow cabinet colleagues were or were not supporting Davis.

Of course we agree with Davis on civil liberties, but it is not in his gift to decide what the election will be fought on. If we had stood we could have tried to make sure that it was fought on things like the way that Tory economic policy is so skewed towards benefiting the already wealthy. We have missed a chance to do it - and there may not be many more of them before the next general election.

It may be argued that if we had not agreed to stand down then Davis would not have resigned. This is probably true, but that eventually would just have left the tensions in the Tory leadership and they would have broken out in a different direction sooner or later.

Is there something more behind this? David Davis was the Thatcherite candidate in the last Tory leadership election, so it is hard to imagine that we have serious hopes of recruiting him. Are we short of money? Perhaps, but a third party has to seize opportunities when they arise.

Simon Hughes's statement - "Don't worry your pretty little heads about this - just go to Henley" (I paraphrase) - does not cast much more light on the decision.

So, while I rather admire Davis' actions, we should be doing our best to beat him at the by-election he has caused.