SimonGuildford.com - Method or Madness?

Simon Guildford Articles Books Interviews Images Links Contact	Is this how far we’ve sunk? Have we really plumbed such depths of political depravity over the past eleven years that we must now look to a Tory MP – and erstwhile member of the Shadow Cabinet – for ethical guidance? Among the multitude of questions raised by David Davis’s recent decision to step down from his post and force a by-election, ostensibly in a bid to challenge New Labour’s controversial 42-day detention bill, this was the first to strike me. Others weren’t far behind. For instance, was Davis’s move a genuinely-altruistic gesture based upon deep-seated personal principles or an attention-seeking publicity stunt which used the contentious legislation as a convenient pretext? Was he correct in describing the extension of the maximum detainment period as a symptom of the “insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms” perpetuated by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, or does the Government’s proposal represent a necessary step in fighting Islamic jihadists as part of the War on Terrorism? What will be the impact of his decision, both for the Prime Minister and for David Cameron, over the coming weeks? And is there a chance, however slim, that the one-time Conservative figurehead has simply severed all ties with the proverbial plot? Insofar as the rights and wrongs of the bill itself are concerned, the liberal in me says that this is a no-brainer. I may have come around to the view that the WoT is a conflict worth fighting, albeit without fully endorsing the invasion of Iraq or the mismanaged campaign in Afghanistan, but the paramount importance of both the rule of law and the writ of habeas corpus remains intact in my view. The obvious counterpoint to this perspective says that we’re living in troubling times, nothing is black and white any longer and keeping terrorist suspects under lock and key for a prolonged spell may help to prevent domestic attacks such as the 7/7 bombings; however, little or no tangible evidence has been adduced to prove that the scheme will work, and in lieu of such proof we must surely emphasise civil liberties over the (still-hypothetical) greater good. However, it’s important to note that, while the detainment bill may have provided the catalyst for Davis’s leap of faith, the “erosion of fundamental British freedoms” to which he alluded also encompasses a range of other, equally-insidious, pieces of Blairite (and Brownite) legislation. This list includes, but is not limited to, New Labour’s controversial I.D. Card scheme, the steady removal of jury trials from our legal system and the oft-noted proliferation of CCTV cameras on our streets. In that sense, perhaps Davis isn’t making a mountain from a molehill after all; maybe, just maybe, he actually has a point of sorts. Regardless of the true motives behind his act of self-sacrifice, an initial glance suggests that it was almost entirely unnecessary. After all, the motion passed through the House of Commons by a slender margin of just nine votes and there remains every possibility that it will be unceremoniously quashed by the Lords when it reaches the upper chamber for their consideration. Furthermore, Gordon Brown’s announcement that New Labour will not field a candidate in the by-election has effectively scuppered the Tory man’s attempt at establishing a pistols-at-dawn duel between David and Goliath. After all, what sort of victory can really be claimed in a game played on a virtually-empty field? Admittedly, there’s a slight chance that the voters in Davis’s Haltemprice and Howden constituency may turn against their MP and kick him unceremoniously into touch, but even an emphatic victory, given the paucity of realistic challengers, cannot really be portrayed as a wholesale endorsement of his kamikaze campaign. With the Liberal Democrats also refusing to put forward a nominee, this time because Nick Clegg’s party agrees with Davis’s stance on the disputed bill, the whole exercise starts to seem pointless in the extreme. On this analysis, then, Davis stands only to lose or draw. He cannot win. A further dose of surreal black humour was soon added to the proceedings when the BNP announced that it too would not be standing against Davis at the July 10 poll. The proposed extension of the legal detention period is, apparently, too much for the freedom-lovers who constitute Nick Griffin’s group. You’d think that these racist bigots would approve of a policy which primarily targets foreigners, but then we’re living in an era during which senior Conservative Party members are putting their careers on the line for the sake of freedom. All bets are now officially off. The only person who publicly considered challenging Davis on the Tory’s chosen grounds of battle was Kelvin MacKenzie, a former editor of The Sun and a man who has proclaimed himself to be “very up for 42 days (sic) and perhaps even 420 days" when it comes to the detention of terrorist suspects. MacKenzie eventually decided against tossing his hat into the ring, citing the problem of having to “rustle up a maximum of £100,000 to conduct [his] campaign”, but it’s hard to see how victory against an independent candidate – even one as vociferously pro-incarceration as this would-be competitor – could help Davis’s cause in any case. He needs to give New Labour, and specifically New Labour, an undeniable bloody nose in order to loan any degree of credence to his mission; sadly, Brown’s refusal to play ball has all but nullified any possibility of such an outcome. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this whole affair is that Davis’s resignation seems to have come in the face of opposition from within his own party, not least from David Cameron himself. The Leader of the Opposition has stood by his man in public, but, at a time when the Conservatives are all but crushing New Labour in the opinion polls, one can’t help but feel that Cameron would prefer low-key stability to grandiose acts of self-sabotage. He certainly wasted no time in appointing a replacement Shadow Home Secretary in the shape of Dominic Grieve, while Davis himself has freely admitted that he doesn’t expect to be welcomed back into Cameron’s inner circle, even if he wins the by-election and reclaims his seat in Parliament, anytime soon. Moreover, Cameron’s repeated use of the phrase “a personal decision” when referring to Davis’s deed can be read as an unsubtle attempt at distancing himself from the furore, presumably in case the stunt backfires on polling-day. Surely, one might think, Davis would have been better off had he chosen to keep his post in the Shadow Cabinet? From there, he could have continued to attack Brown at every opportunity and done everything in his power to win the next general election. Then, as Home Secretary in a Tory administration, he would have had the power to repeal many of the draconian laws for which he has expressed such strong distaste; as a backbench MP with a ‘renegade’ tag permanently strapped around his neck, however, he will have no such leverage. One cannot help but wonder, therefore, why he has chosen to demote himself in such dramatic fashion when staying put would have required less bravado and would have been a more pragmatic approach to boot. Is there method, then, to Davis’s madness? The only rational explanation which springs to mind is this: if he somehow came to believe that his tenure in the Shadow Cabinet would not last until the mooted 2009 ballot, meaning that he would not become Home Secretary after all, he may have decided that this theatrical dive onto an upturned sword would be his only chance to make a difference on a personal level. It seems unlikely, I admit… but then again, so did the prospect of his resignation a mere fortnight ago. Why else would he do something so irredeemably lacking in merit? In the middle of all this needless hoo-hah comes the Henley by-election, precipitated not by a calamitous piece of political posturing but by the ascension of Boris Johnson, the constituency’s former MP, to the London mayoralty back in May. Standing in stark contrast to the upcoming poll in Yorkshire, the Conservative Party is widely expected to win this contest in comfortable fashion and thereby build upon the crushing defeat it inflicted upon Gordon Brown in Crewe and Nantwich last month. Yes, that’s right: Boris Johnson is now a stable Tory bigwig while David Davis is an unpredictable loose cannon. Need I reiterate once more just how utterly bizarre this situation is? No? I thought as much. Ultimately, I’m all for attacking New Labour at every turn and on paper I probably ought to welcome Davis’s gesture on that basis alone. However, said critiques need not only be deserved – which they are on this occasion, due to the morally-ambiguous nature of Brown’s pet bill – but implemented in justifiable and down-to-earth fashion. David Davis may deserve a round of applause for taking a principled stand, but ultimately it seems evident that he could have done so much more in the fight for civil liberties by biting his tongue and staying put; instead, he has done the equivalent of taking a double-barrelled shotgun and emptying both chambers directly into his feet, an endeavour from which his political career is unlikely to recover. I’ll admit that the initial news of Davis’s choice made me giddy with glee, for it seemed to represent a ready-made article for prompt publication and also provided another opportunity for a vehement anti-Brown screed at a time when the Prime Minister is in unprecedented trouble. Lamentably, closer scrutiny of Davis’s deeds left me somewhat less gleeful. Muddled and incoherent actions are likely to make for a similarly-unintelligible analysis, at least without some kind of inside information as to the perpetrator’s motives… and so, unfortunately, it has proved. UPDATE: The Henley by-election went almost exactly as expected on one front (i.e. the Tory candidate, one John Howell, won a resounding victory), but it refused to stick to the script on another. New Labour were beaten even more comprehensively than most onlookers had predicted, with Brown's nominee managing a meagre fifth-place finish - and losing his deposit in the process - with only 1,066 votes. Four Party backers soon spoke out against the PM in an interview with The Sunday Times, and Gordon's woes at the end of his first year in office were cemented when, on June 28, Scottish Labour Leader Wendy Alexander resigned from her post after failing to register donations to her leadership campaign back in August 2007. PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN BY STEVE PUNTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION. R.I.P. George Carlin, 12/05/37 - 22/06/08.

Is this how far we’ve sunk? Have we really plumbed such depths of political depravity over the past eleven years that we must now look to a Tory MP – and erstwhile member of the Shadow Cabinet – for ethical guidance?

Among the multitude of questions raised by David Davis’s recent decision to step down from his post and force a by-election, ostensibly in a bid to challenge New Labour’s controversial 42-day detention bill, this was the first to strike me. Others weren’t far behind.

For instance, was Davis’s move a genuinely-altruistic gesture based upon deep-seated personal principles or an attention-seeking publicity stunt which used the contentious legislation as a convenient pretext? Was he correct in describing the extension of the maximum detainment period as a symptom of the “insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms” perpetuated by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, or does the Government’s proposal represent a necessary step in fighting Islamic jihadists as part of the War on Terrorism? What will be the impact of his decision, both for the Prime Minister and for David Cameron, over the coming weeks? And is there a chance, however slim, that the one-time Conservative figurehead has simply severed all ties with the proverbial plot?

Insofar as the rights and wrongs of the bill itself are concerned, the liberal in me says that this is a no-brainer. I may have come around to the view that the WoT is a conflict worth fighting, albeit without fully endorsing the invasion of Iraq or the mismanaged campaign in Afghanistan, but the paramount importance of both the rule of law and the writ of habeas corpus remains intact in my view.

The obvious counterpoint to this perspective says that we’re living in troubling times, nothing is black and white any longer and keeping terrorist suspects under lock and key for a prolonged spell may help to prevent domestic attacks such as the 7/7 bombings; however, little or no tangible evidence has been adduced to prove that the scheme will work, and in lieu of such proof we must surely emphasise civil liberties over the (still-hypothetical) greater good.

However, it’s important to note that, while the detainment bill may have provided the catalyst for Davis’s leap of faith, the “erosion of fundamental British freedoms” to which he alluded also encompasses a range of other, equally-insidious, pieces of Blairite (and Brownite) legislation. This list includes, but is not limited to, New Labour’s controversial I.D. Card scheme, the steady removal of jury trials from our legal system and the oft-noted proliferation of CCTV cameras on our streets. In that sense, perhaps Davis isn’t making a mountain from a molehill after all; maybe, just maybe, he actually has a point of sorts.

Regardless of the true motives behind his act of self-sacrifice, an initial glance suggests that it was almost entirely unnecessary. After all, the motion passed through the House of Commons by a slender margin of just nine votes and there remains every possibility that it will be unceremoniously quashed by the Lords when it reaches the upper chamber for their consideration.

Furthermore, Gordon Brown’s announcement that New Labour will not field a candidate in the by-election has effectively scuppered the Tory man’s attempt at establishing a pistols-at-dawn duel between David and Goliath. After all, what sort of victory can really be claimed in a game played on a virtually-empty field? Admittedly, there’s a slight chance that the voters in Davis’s Haltemprice and Howden constituency may turn against their MP and kick him unceremoniously into touch, but even an emphatic victory, given the paucity of realistic challengers, cannot really be portrayed as a wholesale endorsement of his kamikaze campaign. With the Liberal Democrats also refusing to put forward a nominee, this time because Nick Clegg’s party agrees with Davis’s stance on the disputed bill, the whole exercise starts to seem pointless in the extreme.

On this analysis, then, Davis stands only to lose or draw. He cannot win.

A further dose of surreal black humour was soon added to the proceedings when the BNP announced that it too would not be standing against Davis at the July 10 poll. The proposed extension of the legal detention period is, apparently, too much for the freedom-lovers who constitute Nick Griffin’s group. You’d think that these racist bigots would approve of a policy which primarily targets foreigners, but then we’re living in an era during which senior Conservative Party members are putting their careers on the line for the sake of freedom. All bets are now officially off.

The only person who publicly considered challenging Davis on the Tory’s chosen grounds of battle was Kelvin MacKenzie, a former editor of The Sun and a man who has proclaimed himself to be “very up for 42 days (sic) and perhaps even 420 days" when it comes to the detention of terrorist suspects. MacKenzie eventually decided against tossing his hat into the ring, citing the problem of having to “rustle up a maximum of £100,000 to conduct [his] campaign”, but it’s hard to see how victory against an independent candidate – even one as vociferously pro-incarceration as this would-be competitor – could help Davis’s cause in any case. He needs to give New Labour, and specifically New Labour, an undeniable bloody nose in order to loan any degree of credence to his mission; sadly, Brown’s refusal to play ball has all but nullified any possibility of such an outcome.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this whole affair is that Davis’s resignation seems to have come in the face of opposition from within his own party, not least from David Cameron himself. The Leader of the Opposition has stood by his man in public, but, at a time when the Conservatives are all but crushing New Labour in the opinion polls, one can’t help but feel that Cameron would prefer low-key stability to grandiose acts of self-sabotage. He certainly wasted no time in appointing a replacement Shadow Home Secretary in the shape of Dominic Grieve, while Davis himself has freely admitted that he doesn’t expect to be welcomed back into Cameron’s inner circle, even if he wins the by-election and reclaims his seat in Parliament, anytime soon. Moreover, Cameron’s repeated use of the phrase “a personal decision” when referring to Davis’s deed can be read as an unsubtle attempt at distancing himself from the furore, presumably in case the stunt backfires on polling-day.

Surely, one might think, Davis would have been better off had he chosen to keep his post in the Shadow Cabinet? From there, he could have continued to attack Brown at every opportunity and done everything in his power to win the next general election. Then, as Home Secretary in a Tory administration, he would have had the power to repeal many of the draconian laws for which he has expressed such strong distaste; as a backbench MP with a ‘renegade’ tag permanently strapped around his neck, however, he will have no such leverage. One cannot help but wonder, therefore, why he has chosen to demote himself in such dramatic fashion when staying put would have required less bravado and would have been a more pragmatic approach to boot.

Is there method, then, to Davis’s madness? The only rational explanation which springs to mind is this: if he somehow came to believe that his tenure in the Shadow Cabinet would not last until the mooted 2009 ballot, meaning that he would not become Home Secretary after all, he may have decided that this theatrical dive onto an upturned sword would be his only chance to make a difference on a personal level. It seems unlikely, I admit… but then again, so did the prospect of his resignation a mere fortnight ago. Why else would he do something so irredeemably lacking in merit?

In the middle of all this needless hoo-hah comes the Henley by-election, precipitated not by a calamitous piece of political posturing but by the ascension of Boris Johnson, the constituency’s former MP, to the London mayoralty back in May. Standing in stark contrast to the upcoming poll in Yorkshire, the Conservative Party is widely expected to win this contest in comfortable fashion and thereby build upon the crushing defeat it inflicted upon Gordon Brown in Crewe and Nantwich last month.

Yes, that’s right: Boris Johnson is now a stable Tory bigwig while David Davis is an unpredictable loose cannon. Need I reiterate once more just how utterly bizarre this situation is? No? I thought as much.

Ultimately, I’m all for attacking New Labour at every turn and on paper I probably ought to welcome Davis’s gesture on that basis alone. However, said critiques need not only be deserved – which they are on this occasion, due to the morally-ambiguous nature of Brown’s pet bill – but implemented in justifiable and down-to-earth fashion. David Davis may deserve a round of applause for taking a principled stand, but ultimately it seems evident that he could have done so much more in the fight for civil liberties by biting his tongue and staying put; instead, he has done the equivalent of taking a double-barrelled shotgun and emptying both chambers directly into his feet, an endeavour from which his political career is unlikely to recover.

I’ll admit that the initial news of Davis’s choice made me giddy with glee, for it seemed to represent a ready-made article for prompt publication and also provided another opportunity for a vehement anti-Brown screed at a time when the Prime Minister is in unprecedented trouble. Lamentably, closer scrutiny of Davis’s deeds left me somewhat less gleeful. Muddled and incoherent actions are likely to make for a similarly-unintelligible analysis, at least without some kind of inside information as to the perpetrator’s motives… and so, unfortunately, it has proved.

UPDATE: The Henley by-election went almost exactly as expected on one front (i.e. the Tory candidate, one John Howell, won a resounding victory), but it refused to stick to the script on another. New Labour were beaten even more comprehensively than most onlookers had predicted, with Brown's nominee managing a meagre fifth-place finish - and losing his deposit in the process - with only 1,066 votes. Four Party backers soon spoke out against the PM in an interview with The Sunday Times, and Gordon's woes at the end of his first year in office were cemented when, on June 28, Scottish Labour Leader Wendy Alexander resigned from her post after failing to register donations to her leadership campaign back in August 2007.

R.I.P. George Carlin, 12/05/37 - 22/06/08.