Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has announced that he is to resign both from the Shadow Cabinet and from his seat as an MP. The decision follows the continuous attack on our civil liberties by the New Labour government culminating with yesterday’s Commons vote approving 42 days internment.

David Davis will fight a by-election to try and regain his Haltemprice and Howden seat. He will base his campaign on the issues of civil liberties in general and 42 day internment in particular. Davis said:

“…42 days is just one - perhaps the most salient example - of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.

“We will have, shortly, the most intrusive Identity Card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it. We’ve witnessed an assault on jury trials - that balwark against bad law and its arbritary by the state; shortcuts with our justice system that make our system neither firm nor fair; and the creation of a database state, opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.

“The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called ‘hate laws’ that stifle legitimate debate whilst those who incite violence get off scot free.

“This cannot go on, it must be stopped, and for that reason today I feel it incumbent on me to take a stand”

[...]

“I will argue this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government.”

Davis is unlikely to lose the by-election: the Tories gained 48% of the vote in the 2005 election. Second place were the Lib-Dems who have said that they will not put up a candidate to fight Davis. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said:

“The Liberal Democrats have consistently opposed this unnecessary and illiberal proposal which poses a threat so serious to British liberties that it transcends party politics.

“I have therefore decided, after consultation with the Party nationally and locally, that we will not stand a candidate at the forthcoming by-election which will be contested by David Davis solely on this issue.”

Photo Credit: SouthbankSteve (Creative Commons)

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