What Guido calls "the Jonah effect" has struck again. Whenever Brown endorses someone, or something, then problems follow. His latest endorsement was of 42 days - "the British public overwhelmingly back the concept and David Davis was hopelessly wrong", so said the Feartie from Fife.And yet an ICM poll from Sky shows that opinion has changed: 61% now side with David Davis. Great work, Gordon!
But the real credit deserves to go to DD himself. He sacrificed a frontbench career to campaign for freedom. The by-election is just the first part of that campaign. He has succeeded in provoking debate on the issue, perhaps not as widely as he'd have liked but he's still done it. And he's won the argument. Now for other battles for freedom to commence...
4 comments:
I am still waiting for Cameron to stand up for civil liberties in the same way as David Davis. I don't want the Lib Dems to benefit from the principled stand of a Conservative MP.
'I am still waiting for Cameron to stand up for civil liberties in the same way as David Davis.'
You will be waiting a darn long time for that phony Tory to stand up for anything.
DD should be the leader of the Conservative party and this only proves it.
Tory membership, you was bowled a right (rather left) googly and look what you have now.
The self acclaimed 'heir to Blair'.
Pathetic.
Congratulations.
David Davis has to some degree forced us all to consider these issues more carefully.
His approach, whilst maybe a bit eccentric, shows guts and and understanding of leadership as well as the courage of his convictions.
The opposite is true of Brown.
A lot of people are sick up to the gills with 'normal', responsible i.e. careerist politicians, but also (rightly) cynical about the feel-good yet numbing idealism so familiar to us all after a decade of Blair's best rhetoric.
Whatever else might be said about him, David Davis has at least managed to break free of both these negative stereotypes. The result is that - outside the Westminster laager - 'ordinary', habitually apolitical people really are talking about the issues Davis has raised, as well as feeling a sort of admiration for the sublime impulsiveness that led him on this path.
And if we're not hearing much about that from the mainstream media, it's because, in the days that followed Davis' recognition, the media so signally failed to pick up on the public mood, substituting their own censoriousness for the kinds of conversations about Davis that the rest of us were having, with our apolitical neighbours and friends, all over the country.
Unfortunately, since Cameron is terrified of the media, there was never any chance that, even out of his well-developed talent for self-preservation, he'd have given Davis serious, concerted support.
For what it's worth, I've never been convinced that Davis would make much of a party leader, but I am increasingly delighted that he's chosen to influence the party, and the country, in this novel yet apparently highly effective way.
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