Party like it's 2005: Ed Davey announces new decapitation strategy

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Liberal Democrat leader targets senior Tory seats at UK general election

runs the headline on the Financial Times interview with Ed Davey today.

Older Lib Dems will immediately be put in mind of the 2005 general election, when the party boasted of its 'decapitation strategy'. The seats held by a number of leading Conservatives had been chosen as targets and we expected to deal a mortal blow to the Her Majesty's Opposition on the night.

In the event, David Davis, Oliver Letwin, Theresa May and the rest survived. It was our Labour targets (Cambridge, Hornsey and Wood Green, Manchester Withington) that fell to us at that election.

Our only leading Tory scalp in 2005 was a long-forgotten figure called Tim Collins. It was he who had briefed the press back in 1993 that John Major's 'Back to Basics' speech was about personal morality. and thus done much to ensure that the Tories became figures of ridicule for the rest of Major's time in power as one juicy scandal followed another.

Collins lost to another Tim: Tim Farron.

As to Ed Davey's interview, the big news is that he is happy to discuss Europe:

He said his party would be pushing for a new trade deal with the EU to replace the “appalling” one signed by Johnson when he was prime minister. He added his party’s long-term policy was to rejoin the single market. 

“If you don’t put a better trading relationship with Europe in as part of that mix, you’re not going to get the economy sparking again,” he said, though he noted his EU counterparts had been clear that for now “the single market ain’t on the table”.

And, something that is hard to reconcile with his bullish talk of Lib Dem prospects earlier in the interview, he thinks there is a good chance of a hung parliament.

How the Lib Dems were trapped in the Coalition rose garden

I've come across a paper on the Liberal Democrat experience of being in coalition with the Conservatives and of defending that record at the 2015 general election.

It is written by Dr Matt Cole from the University of Birmingham, who interviewed Liberal Democrat campaign teams in 12 constituencies that the party had won at the 2010 general election. His research was conducted after the 2015 election and published in September 2016.

The whole paper is worth reading, but I shall pick out three areas of particular interest here.

First there is the Fixed-term Parliament Act. Ending the ability of prime ministers to call an election when they thought it would favour their party has long been Liberal and then Lib Dem policy, and it was thought that we could not enter coalition without such an act.

The thinking was that we needed to be sure the Tories could not pull the rug out from under us as soon as they judged it would be to their advantage.

But was the act really to Lib Dem advantage? Because it left us unable to cut short the coalition too.

In the unexpectedly perspicacious words of David Davis, we had "the best seats on the plane but no parachute".

As Matt Cole points out, when the Liberals left the Lib-Lab Pact in 1978 it marked the start of a period in which the party’s poll rating rose from 6 per cent to 14 per cent before the 1979 election. No such strategy was open to the Lib Dems before 2015.

Then there was our attitude to finding ourselves in government. Cole quotes one MP as saying that we "spent the first two years apologising for being in government".

That is a succinct summing up of the approach of Richard Reeves, Nick Clegg's director of strategy until 2012:

In a presentation to Lib Dem MPs then, Mr Reeves mapped out three phases for the Coalition. The first had to be about unity on cutting the deficit, to show that coalition works and put down firm foundations. Phase two would be "differentiation" to show voters the Lib Dems were not the same as the Tories, before a natural divergence ahead of the 2015 election.

As it turned out, we should have been showing voters that we were not the same as the Tories from the first day of the coalition. A large chunk of our voters concluded that we were the same and withdrew their support as a result. By the time we were thinking about differentiation they were no longer intereted in us.

Reeves, if he is remembered at all, is remembered for social liberals that they should join the Labour Party, but he is a notable interpreter of John Stuart Mill.

Finally, the views Matt Cole gathered on the 2015 election campaign are depressingly familiar because people have been saying much the same thing about that of 2019. 

Try:

The national campaign accompanying the manifesto was widely and severely criticised amongst interviewees for its failure to integrate with their constituency campaigns or to win support from the public.

and:

Some complained … that materials prepared for delivery in the constituency … had to be abandoned as unsuitable.

More generally, there were tensions between the campaign teams in the constituencies and an overbearing Liberal Democrat HQ. To illustrate them, Cole included this artwork from the cover of the February 2015 Liberator.

Did Mark Littlewood start out in the Chard Group?

© Steve Barnes

It looks as though Mark Littlewood will be in the news this week thanks to this Guardian story:

The director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was secretly recorded telling an undercover reporter that funders could get to know ministers on first-name terms and that his organisation was in “the Brexit influencing game”.

Mark Littlewood claimed the IEA could make introductions to ministers and said the thinktank’s trade expert knew Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis and Liam Fox well. 

The IEA chief was also recorded suggesting potential US donors could fund and shape “substantial content” of research commissioned by the thinktank and that its findings would always support the argument for free-trade deals.

The Guardian also quotes Littlewood's response that there is nothing wrong with any of this, though I am not convinced by research whose conclusions you know before you have conducted it.

Sir Karl Popper writes: Neither am I and nor is Caron Lindsay. And is "thinktank" really one word?

As Littlewood is in the news, it seems a good time to quote a 2010 item from Liberator's Radical Bulletin - you can download a pdf of the whole issue yourself.

That story runs:

A fascinating Chard Group document comes our way (and that is not a phrase you will often read in Liberator). Long before its present preoccupation with running conference raffles, the Chard Group was set up and run by Richard Denton-White to support Paddy Ashdown’s objective, set out in his 1992 speech in Chard, of working more closely with Labour. 

The September 1995 issue of the group’s Campaigner newsletter says its new vice-chair is Mark Littlewood, who “is now the youth president of the European Movement”. 

Someone called Mark Littlewood was the Lib Dems’ head of media until his unfortunate spot of bother with Ming Campbell’s inaugural conference speech as leader in March 2006, and later ran the lunatic-fringe libertarian right Liberal Vision, before departing the Lib Dems last year to become director of the Thatcherite Institute of Economic Affairs. 

That Mark Littlewood was, by an extraordinary coincidence, described as a former youth officer of the European Movement in a 2004 interview in PR Week to mark his appointment as Lib Dem press officer. 

So did Littlewood really make the strange political journey from Denton-White’s pro-Labour body to the wilder shores of the libertarian right – and, if so, where might he next be found?

Well, he's still to be found at the IEA. But if he did start our with the Chard Group his journey has been stranger even than that of his employee Darren Grimes.

I was right about David Davis and Kieron Dyer Syndrome

I have never seen a politician so diminished by office as David Davis.

— Nick Cohen (@NickCohen4) June 1, 2018

I explained Kieron Dyer Syndrome when discussing the appeal of Dan Jarvis:

In the day when we all believed that England's 'golden generation' (Ferdinand, Campbell, Beckham, Owen, Scholes Butt) was going to win us the 2002 World Cup, there was just one problem. We  had no one to play in an attacking role on the left. 

But there was an answer. Kieron Dyer had broken into the Ipswich side as a teenager and then signed for Newcastle. He looked a great prospect. 

He was injured in the run up to the tournament and could not play in any of the warm up games. But the odd thing was that the less he played, the more certain the pundits became that he was the answer to England's problems. His stock could hardly have stood higher. 

At last Dyer was fit to play for England. And everyone saw that he wasn't very good. 

So maybe Dan Jarvis's growing reputation is a an example of Kieron Dyer Syndrome. Labour must hope this is not the case.

As it turned out Jarvis never did stand as Labour leader and, while still an MP, he is now the elected mayor of the Sheffield City Region.

But this was not the first time I had introduced the concept.

In a Liberal Democrat News column from September 2004 I wrote:

While he was on the back benches, David Davis was the Conservatives' great hope. As shadow home secretary, he is less impressive. 

It reminds you of the way Kieron Dyer became an indispensable part of England's last World Cup team by not being fit for any of the warm up games. 

So when I saw Nick Cohen's tweet above I felt vindicated.

Dick Newby ridicules government secrecy over Brexit impact reports

Jessica Elgot reports in the Guardian that MPs and peers have criticised the secrecy around the publication of the government's Brexit impact reports:

Parliamentarians are now allowed to view the papers in a restricted-access reading room organised by [David] Davis’s Department for Exiting the EU (DexEU), which one called “ridiculous amounts of security just to ensure that as few people see this stuff as possible”. 

Another described the collection of documents as “two lever-arch files for 80% of the economy”.

One of the first parliamentarians to view the reports was the Liberal Democrats' Dick Newby:

Dick Newby, the Lib Dem leader in the House of Lords, who was one of the first in the reading room, described the tight security as "a complete farce" and said it was incorrect to call the papers impact assessments. 

"They make no assessment of the impact. They describe the current situation, they explain how the EU operates as well as how other countries work and then a section on what stakeholders think – that’s it," he said. 

"There is zero assessment of the economic impact. Nothing is redacted because there is nothing to redact." 

Lord Newby said the information provided to the government by trade bodies quoted in the reports was contained in statements they had made in public. "There is no reason whatsoever why they shouldn’t be published," he said.

Behind the facade of Conservative unity it's ferrets-in-a-sack time

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Politics Home says Theresa May’s enemies plan to challenge her leadership in the week after the Conservative conference.

That is the traditional time to do it. Remember the rapturous reception the Tories gave Iain Duncan Smith just before they shot him?

But it is clear that cabinet members are already fighting for the succession. Take a couple of stories that appeared in the press today.

There was the one, in the words of the Telegraph, where

Philip Hammond has found himself at the heart of a sexism row after telling fellow members of the cabinet that driving trains was so easy "even a woman can do it."

It may be true. It may be true but exaggerated. It may be false.

But the most striking thing is that an account of a discussion at cabinet has appeared in the press at all.

Who passed on the story?

As a Remain supporter, the chancellor is not trusted by the Leavers around the table, so look for the culprit among them.

Not that all is sweetness and light among the Leavers. Have a look at  this headline from the Sun:

BOJO SEX SMEAR Ally of David Davis is spreading rumours Boris Johnson slept with Theresa May’s aide during campaign

What are we to make of this one?

It could be that someone from Davis's camp really is spreading these rumours. Equally, it could be that the Johnson camp is spreading the rumour that this rumour is being spread to discredit Davis.

It it is the latter, then this could also be an attempt to put Johnson's private life out of bounds in any future leadership election - even though he has been given a remarkably easy ride in this area.

I don't know which explanation is true or if there is an even more machiavellian one. The only clue is that the story is written by Harry Cole, who comes from the Guido Fawkes team where adoration of Boris Johnson is the house religion.

Whatever the truth of this, you don't have to read between the lines to know the Conservatives are at each other's throats. You just have to read the headlines.

Boris Johnson and the collapse of British power

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So Boris Johnson is the new foreign secretary.

Our relations with other countries are now in the hands of a man who, only a couple of weeks ago, destroyed his own chances of becoming the Conservatives' leader with one undiplomatic newspaper column.

And he has previous.

In 2004 Johnson was ordered by his leader Michael Howard to go to Liverpool and apologise to the people of the city after he marked the murder of Ken Bigley by running an article in the Spectator that said of them:

"They see themselves whenever possible as victims, and resent their victim status; yet at the same time they wallow in it."

In 2006 he had to apologise to the people of Papua New Guinea after likening to his colleagues in the Tory party:

"For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing."

In 2007 he described Portsmouth as

"a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs."

And in 2008 he apologised for a column he had written in 2002 that referred to black people as "piccaninnies" and talked about their "watermelon smiles". During that same mayoral campaign he was also embarrassed by some of the racist columns by Taki that he had published in the Spectator.

The appointment of Boris Johnson is a confirmation that Britain is no longer a world power.

What international relations are left to us will be handled by David Davis, who is a grown up, as we attempt to withdraw from the European Union.

Johnson will merely go around the world exuding what he imagines to be upper-class charm. He will go down well with the sort of people who enjoy Richard Curtis films.

When the foreign secretary gig falls through - and I would not put money on its lasting too long - he will probably turn to playing the English butler in a situation comedy on American television.

David Davis criticises Theresa May in Commons point of order

The home secretary Theresa May was quoted in the Sun this morning attacking those, chiefly the Lib Dems it seemed, who oppose her Communications Data Bill.

Isabel Hardman takes up the story on the Spectator Coffee House blog:

This irritated David Davis sufficiently for the Tory backbencher to raise May’s comments as a point of order in the House of Commons this afternoon. Davis, who has made his own opposition to the Bill abundantly clear from the start, told the Speaker:

"I raise this point of order with you in respect of your duty of defending the interests and rights of backbenchers and committees in this House. This morning in an interview with the Sun newspaper, the Home Secretary, who I see is on the Treasury Bench, said the following about the Communications Data Bill: 

"'Criminals, terrorists and paedophiles will want MPs to vote against this bill. Victims of crime, police and the public will want them to vote for it. It’s a question of whose side you’re on.' She also said: 'Anybody who is against this bill is putting politics before people’s lives.'

"A Joint Committee of this House and the other House is meeting at present to pass comment on this Bill. Therefore, apart from traducing a large number of Members of this House, the Home Secretary is undermining the work of that Committee. Has she asked to come to the House to explain herself, and if not, what can you do to protect us, Mr Speaker?"

We have come along way from the days when Cowley Street (as it then was) was trying to convince Lib Dem bloggers that we should all support this bill.

Arlene Phillips shows that Labour and the Tories are both weak on liberty

You can't always believe what you read in a newspaper - even if it is the Shropshire Star. But, as the tweet above shows, this is a true story:

Ms Phillips, 68, stepped in to help her 32-year-old daughter Alana who was asked for ID by a member of staff at the checkout at the Morrisons store on Barons Cross Road. 

But the West End dance choreographer, who lives in the area, was told she could not be sold the booze as it was her daughter who had tried initially tried to buy it.

This sort of nonsense came in under New Labour. Partly in a spirit of Somebody Think of the Children and partly because they wanted to soften us up to accept compulsory identity cards, Tony Blair's governments got us used to a world where someone who looked as though they might be aged under 18 or 21 or 25 could be challenged to prove his age if he tried to buy alcohol.

I also wonder if the central role the supermarkets were given in public health campaigns encouraged them to have ideas above their station.

But the more interesting question is why the current government has done nothing about such laws. My suspicion is that most Tory MPs are far more concerned with looking tough than they are with individual liberty.

Which is why you get even the best of them putting forward nonsense like this:

"The government's basic failure to enforce the law sends totally the wrong message about under-age drinking and puts the public at risk from the spiralling violence it generates."

That is from a press release issued by David Davis in February 2008 when he was still shadow home secretary.

Brokeback Coalition jokes are so gay

David Davis has been overheard making jokes about Clegg and Cameron at the Boot & Flogger wine bar in South London. (This is a venue where I have been overheard myself, but that is a story for another day.)

Quite why this is seen as an important news story, I do not understand. But well done to Nick Clegg for handling it so capably today.

What I do know is that to observe that two men like each other and work together well and then say, in effect, "hur, hur, hur, they must be gay" is cheap and ignorant.

That is "ignorant" as we use the word in Leicestershire. The person referred to is ill mannered as well as ill informed or ill educated.

In this case I suggest this observation comes from frustrated ambition. For no very obvious reason Davis has convinced himself that he ought to be Tory leader and holds a grievance against David Cameron as a result.

Still, Harriet Harman makes similar cracks about partnerships and marriages every time she leads for Labour at prime minister's questions. So being the niece of a Countess is no guarantee that you will not be cheap and ignorant.

David Davis accuses British intelligence service of "outsourcing torture"

David Davis has used parliamentary privilege to accuse the British intelligence service of "outsourcing torture".

The former Shadow Home Secretary, reports BBC News:

cited the case of Rangzieb Ahmed, from Rochdale, who was jailed for life for being an al-Qaeda planner.

Mr Davies (sic) told the House of Commons that intelligence services had allowed Ahmed to go to Pakistan.

Once there, they alerted Pakistani authorities who arrested him and tortured him, parliament was told.

Mr Davies (sic) is calling for a judicial inquiry into at least 15 cases where torture of terrorist suspects has been alleged.

House Points: David Davis should have stayed in the shadow cabinet

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

In the shadows

David Davis is everywhere. He was at the Convention on Modern Liberty last Saturday. He was at the celebration of 20 years of Charter 88 I reported a few weeks ago. The only place he is not to be found is the one where his presence would be most valuable. He is no longer in the Conservative shadow cabinet.

Some saw Davis’s resignation to fight a by-election last year as a magnificent gesture. But Labour and (more questionably) the Liberal Democrats declined to put up against him, so he found himself facing 25 assorted eccentrics – up to and including David Icke. And Davis looked less brave when the Green candidate, the nearest thing he had to a serious challenger, complained he would not debate with her.

That by-election was been swiftly forgotten. Call it a political suicide bombing. Blame it on frustrated ambition or the male menopause. But we are all living with the consequences of Davis’s folly. For we must now suffer a shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, who stands for everything Davis opposes.

Grayling made his inaugural speech to the Local Government Association, repeating it almost word for word in the Commons the next day:

“Police should have powers to go straight to a magistrate and get an order against that troublemaker confining them to their homes for up to a month – except for during school hours. And if they break that curfew order they should expect to find themselves in the cells.”

It was all summed up in the bizarre sound bite “fewer rights, more wrongs”.

The Tory faithful will lap this up. But David Cameron has based his strategy on appealing to the sort of liberal-minded people who have not voted Conservative since 1992. Quite how Grayling’s appointment will further this is not clear.

Yet in one way he is admirably suited to shadow Jacqui Smith. She was in the papers after they discovered she had named her sister’s spare bedroom as her main residence and was claiming a second home allowance on the house in her constituency where her husband and children live.

Similarly, despite being MP for a Surrey constituency, Grayling claims that allowance for a Westminster flat. Those same papers quoted neighbours who said they seldom see him there.

The rise of Chris Grayling confirms the folly of David Davis

When David Davis resigned as shadow home secretary to fight a by-election there were those who saluted him. I was not one of them.

Just how great a blow his resignation was to hopes that a Conservative government would take a more civilised view of civil liberties has been made clear:

David Cameron yesterday downgraded the Tories' commitment to civil liberties when he declared that the sole focus of the Home Office under a Conservative government would be to tackle crime. In a sign that the party is distancing itself from the era of David Davis, the former shadow home secretary who resigned over the government's 42-day detention plan, the Tories pledged to introduce a 21st-century alternative to "a clip-round-the-ear" policing.

Underlining the party's tougher approach, Cameron issued a blunt message to wayward children. "It's the Conservatives you're dealing with now," he said. "You're not going to get away with it any more."

Cameron made his remarks as he introduced Chris Grayling, who was making his first speech as shadow home secretary. Grayling made clear that civil liberties would not be one of his priorities when he said: "If I am home secretary after the next election, my job is very simple - to be tough on crime."

Will anyone defend Davis now?

You cannot trust the Tories with our liberties

In last week's House Points I wrote about home office questions. One thing I did not have space to write about was a question from Jeremy Wright, the Tory MP for Rugby and Kenilworth:

Does the Minister agree that if there is a good argument for the retention of DNA samples in the circumstances that we are describing, it would be far better for the Government to make the argument for a comprehensive DNA database straightforwardly to the House and the wider public, so that we could debate the merits of the proposal?

Last year I wrote that "'Calling for a debate' is what people do nowadays when they hold an opinion but are afraid to express it." This seems a clear example of that phenomenon.

Some Conservatives, such as David Davis, are instinctive civil libertarians, and David Cameron has seen the tactical sense in dragging the party back to a position where it can appeal to liberal-minded voters.

But I suspect that Jeremy Wright speaks for many other obscure figures on Cameron's backbenchers when he implicitly supports a compulsory national DNA database. Which is why I would not trust the Tories with our liberties.

Have a Go with Kiron Reid

Kiron Reid, my friend and fellow Liberator collective member, has an article on Comment is Free today. He talks about a report by the think tank Reform that suggests the "have a go hero" is rarer in Britain today than other European countries.

He writes:

The policy paper highlights a truth that many politicians do not want to admit – that the government and politicians cannot tackle crime; that it is local people, the police and local agencies working together that can.

Initiatives like the Community Justice Centre presided over by Judge David Fletcher are showing the community that the system will deal with their concerns. So are energetic young police inspectors and their teams on the ground.

But innovations only appear to be allowed if they fit in with centralised policy and funding regimes.

There has been a trend - on the left and among some liberals - to argue that tackling crime must be left entirely to the police. Any public intervention in the field is dismissed as "vigilantism".

The other day I turned up an old posting on this blog that defended John Reid's plans for a campaign under the slogan: "Don't moan - take action. It's your street too".

David Davis had claimed "It is brazen beyond belief for the Government to try to shift responsibility on to the shoulders of the public."

That was nonsense then and it is still nonsense now. In a free society citizens should not surrender responsibility for public order wholly to the state.

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.

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.