Now Tebbit supports Labour not Davis on 42-days...

I seldom find myself in agreement with Norman Tebbit, the so called Chingford Skinhead, but the views on 42-days and yesterday's bizarre by-election he expressed tonight on Radio 4's Any Questions are right on the button.

First, he said it would be difficult to agree with David Davis that yesterday's by-election was a victory for civil liberties.

Then the former Tory Cabinet Minister who famously advised the jobless to 'get on their bikes' revealed that he supported the Labour Government in increasing the maximum pre-charge detention for suspected terrorists from 28 to 42 days.

Lord Tebbit sensibly suggested that contrary to what some believe, our police are not actually waiting to pounce on terror suspects to lock them up for 42-days without reasonable cause and that in fact the measure would be rarely used, but may be necessary in some cases, for instance to give security forces time to uncover evidence held in seized computers.

Lord Tebbit's show-stopper was to remind us that his own wife had been 'locked up in a wheelchair for the past 24 years' after the IRA terrorist attack on the 1984 Conservative Party Conference.

Audience members pointed out that David Davis makes himself out to be a champion of civil liberties, yet has previously voted for hanging. More recently of course, in the Commons, he voted to increase the maximum pre-charge detention period for suspected terrorists from 14 to 28 days.

So he's for doubling the period to 28 days, but is against 42 days 'on principle'...

As predicted HERE...!, Mr Davis managed to beat off all looney all-comers, with most excitement before the result was announced being a recount between the Greens and the English National Party for a distant second place.

And of course, David Davis instantly claimed a 'stunning victory' - despite the fact that thousands fewer people voted for him yesterday than in 2005...

And despite the other fact that his party leader David Cameron let it be known that there's no place in the Tory Shadow Cabinet for the man who fought him for the Leadership .

For me, what David Davis achieved in his daft stunt, is to highlight that not only are the Tories against locking up suspected terrorists for a maximum of 42-days without charge, but they are also against CCTV and the DNA database - both of which protect the innocent majority - and which have both helped bring criminals to justice.

Once of the reasons the prisons are now full, despite provision of extra places, is DNA evidence which has helped lock up perpetrators of hundreds of serious crimes - years after they thought they had escaped justice...

Internment: The Inconvenient Truth for David Davis...

David Davis's basic argument is fundamentally flawed: He talks of how Parliament has nobly defended the freedom of people for centuries, until a Labour Government this week supported detention of terror suspects for a maximum 42 days without charge...

Firstly, didn't David Davis himself vote to increase the maximum detention period to 28-days just a couple of years ago...?

Why was he in favour of an increase to four weeks then, but six weeks now suddenly becomes an issue to force a by-election over...?

Secondly, at different times in our history, British governments have implemented internment - and with none of the protections for the individual which were enshrined in this week's measures.

Has David Davis forgotten that in 1971, British Prime Minister Ted Heath approved the rounding-up and indefinite jailing of hundreds of British citizens without trial and without charge?

In 1971, MPs like Mr Davis weren't given a vote on the issue as he was this week. Not even a debate in Parliament.

Just an executive announcement - after more than 300 men had already been detained indefinitely in dawn raids.

This certainly was an 'erosion of freedoms' and it happened under a British Prime Minister of the same political party as David Davis...

Incidentally, it was a Labour Home Secretary - Merlyn Rees - who finally ended the policy.

So it is wrong for Mr Davis to at least hint that no British Government since Magna Carta has ever locked anyone up for six weeks without charge.

Internment seventies-style was draconian when compared with the sensible measures which were democratically approved this week after proper parliamentary and public debate and a whole series of safeguards incorporated to ensure protection of individual rights.

An absolute maximum 42-days detention in 'exceptional and extra-ordinary' individual cases, with regular scrutiny in the interests of the suspect is very different to simply rounding up hundreds of suspects, detaining them indefinitely without charge and then announcing the policy change.

But internment wasn't invented in 1971. It simply implemented long-standing legislation previously used by British Governments in almost every decade of the 20th Century.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, for example, 300 men were rounded up by security forces and detained without charge for an average of two years.

Two years is very different to 42 days.

I made my views clear both before the vote - The answer is 42 - and in response to David Davis's Bizarre stunt or as blogger Bob Piper more eloquently put it: a cunning stunt.

But David Cameron is reportedly spitting nails with David Davis's antics - and today's headlines show why.

Here's just a few...

Daily Telegraph - Tensions with Cameron lay behind Davis resignation...

Daily Mail - Tories in turmoil..

The Times - ...frustrated Cameron

The Scotsman - Tories ridiculed...

And The Sun, who may run thir own candidate against Mr Davis - Who Dares Whinges. Shadow Home Secretary and SAS reservist David Davis plunged a dagger into the heart of his party yesterday by quitting his job in a strop over Labour’s terror crackdown.

BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson says when shocked Tory 'Leader' David Cameron said David Davis was 'courageous', it was parliamentary code for 'bonkers'.

Which coincidentally, is the very word David Davis admits that his wife used to describe his bizarre behaviour...

The Sun may stand by-election candidate...

The Sun may put up their own candidate to take on David Davis in the parliamentary by-election he called today after failing to defeat the Government on '42 days'.

Former editor Kelvin McKenzie told BBC's This Week programme that he had already met media mogul Rupert Murdoch who said that if Labour decided not to stand a candidate against Davis, then The Sun should.

McKenzie says Murdoch asked him to consider standing - with the backing of Britain's biggest selling newspaper.

He added: "Rupert is good for the money...and I might well do it."

McKenzie made it clear that both he and public opinion are strongly in favour of extending detention for terror suspects to a maximum 42 days.

Earlier in the programme, presenter Andrew Neil said that while Davis had not discussed his by election plan directly with Tory Leader David Cameron, he had consulted with Liberty campaigner Shami Charabarti.