Senior Tory attacks Tory NHS plans...

Mad. Naive. Dangeorus. Hazardous. All words used to describe Conservative plans for the NHS. All chosen by senior Tory David Davis in an article he penned for a Sunday paper!

With friends like that...

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...

Who pays for by-election stunt....er, it's you.

Imagine what you could do with £200,000...That's the cost to the taxpayer of David Davis's daft by-election stunt as estimated by The Daily Torygraph.

Polls opened earlier this morning in what is surely the most meaningless and needless by-election in the history of British politics.

David Cameron's rival for the leadership of the Conservative Party comfortably won the Howden and Haltemprice seat in the 2005 General Election. But after a democratic vote in the house of Commons went against him, he threw his toys out of his pram, causing an unnecessary and costly by-election...in which he is standing as a candidate.

Bizarre.

With neither of the mainstream parties getting sucked into the daftest Tory trick, voters today face a daunting choice of 26 candidates on the longest voting paper in history all hoping to cash in on Davis's publicity stunt.

As well as 13 candidates claiming to be 'Independent', the residents of Howden and Haltemprice also have the chance to vote for the so-called Mad-Cow Girl who is standing for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

There's also the Make Politicians History Party, the National Front Britain for the British Party, the Miss Great Britain Party, the Christian Party, the Freedom 4 Choice Party, the Green Party, the New Party, the English Democrats: Putting England First party, and of course, the Socialist Equality Party.

But the favourite has to be the Church of the Militant Elvis Party.

Then there's the original David: ie, the man who once claimed to be a re-incarnation of God, who's so well known, he's standing in his own name with no party label.

(That's David Icke of course, not David Davis).

Then there's the ego himself, David Michael Davis, the Conservative Candidate.
They're all totally bonkers, of course.

Don't bother staying up for the result. I can confidently predict that David Michael Davis will fight off the other nutters and comfortably be declared the winner with a massively increased majority...and he will then declare a great victory for freedom and democracy without even mentioning the word 'hollow' or who picks up the tab.

So will Mr Davis have to pay for his stunt and have £200,000 docked from his MP's wages to be paid back the taxpayers of Britain...?

Nope. Didn't think so.

UPDATE: I see that even the local paper the Hull Daily Mail is having difficulty taking the by-election seriously - and who can blame them with one candidate campaiging for 'nil votes' so he can get in the Guinness Book of Records...

The Mail predicts that the winner will be the Willerby Manor Hotel, unofficial headquarters for press conferences, campaign launches, events and late-night plotting over a few drinks.

The paper reports:

As one staff member told me the other day: “I'm all for these kind of by-elections, business is booming.”

So who's guilty of snooping in the dustbins...?

Councils snooping on rubbish bins is one of the so-called 'erosions of liberty' that David Davis is quick to blame the Labour Government for.

I wonder if he saw this story published a few days before he pulled his stunt of resigning his parliamentary seat, then standing again in an unnecessary and expensive by-election.

The story is from the Brighton Argus site and is about Mid-Sussex District Council spending hundreds of pounds taking wheelie bins and sifting throught them to see how much waste food has been dumped - all without the permission of the residents/

The story was - no surprise - manna from heaven for the Daily Mail who followed up the Argus tale with the headline
'Council snooping on residents' leftovers' (sorry, no link).

So who runs Mid-Sussex, the snooping Council...?

Yep, the Conservatives!!!

Same old Tories, eh?

Cameron's leadership questioned as Grieve signals Tory flip-flop on 28 days...

More turmoil for David Cameron today as the man he hastily appointed to replace David Davis as Shadow Home Secretary signals a u-turn on Conservative support the current 28-day limit for detention without charge for suspected terrorists.

David Cameron's judgement in promoting Dominic Grieve after David Davis threw his toys out of his pram was already being questioned - specially within Conservative circles.

As highlighed yesterday on The Spectator website, the man who would be Home Secretary should the Tories win the next General Election, apparently described the actions of the 7/7 London suicide bombers who murderered 54 people and injured hundreds in London as 'totally explicable'.

And today, Dominic Grieve's comments in the Daily Telegraph calling for a limit of less than 28 days are surely further evidence of the divisions, farce and flip-flops of David Cameron's leadership.

It's worth remembering that it was not long since the Conservatives - including Cameron, Davis and Grieve all voted in the House of Commons to increase the maximum detention period without charge to 28-days.

What an incredible can of worms David Davis has opened...

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.

Bizarre stunt exposes Tory splits and Cameron's weak leadership...

Today's bizarre stunt by David Davis in forcing a needless - and costly - parliamentary by-election after losing the democratic vote shows David Cameron and the Tories in disarray...

As the BBC's political editor suggests Cameron has lost the plot, it's worth reflecting on what The Sun says today following last night's Commons vote on locking up suspected terrorists for a maximum 42 days without charge:

GORDON Brown is entitled to considerable satisfaction after his victory in last night’s terror vote.

He stood up for the fight against extremism in the face of deeply hostile criticism and predictions of disaster — not least from his own party.

The same cannot be said for the Opposition who seemed more concerned about narrow self-interest than the national interest.
We expect nothing less from the Lib-Dems. But we might have hoped for better from Conservatives who aim one day to be in charge of protecting Britain from attack.

The move to detain terror suspects for 42 days without charge is backed by police and security chiefs.

It is supported by seven out of ten voters, instinctively by many of David Cameron’s own Tory MPs and — as The Sun revealed yesterday — by his grassroots voters.
Yet they were all whipped into the Opposition lobby, apparently for opposition’s sake.

Some demeaned themselves by shabbily jeering Ulster MPs who supported the PM, knowing more than most about fighting terror.

Yes, it was a narrow government margin: just nine votes.

But that was enough to give police and security services the tools they need to test complex evidence against dangerous extremists.

We must hope we will NEVER need to detain a suspect for 42 days.

But Gordon Brown rightly argued that now is the time to act — in a period of calm debate, not in the wake of a national catastrophe.

It would have been deeply irresponsible to wait until Britain was in deadly peril before realising 28 days was not long enough.

The Commons struggle was a major victory for the PM after a torrid six months. He passed it with credit.

Now he has a precious breathing space — and the opportunity to prove to the country he has the vision and the energy as Prime Minister.

BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson says:

David Cameron has lost control of his strategy. This was not his decision. He wasn't asked for his agreement.

In other words, he's lost the plot.

And while senior Tories admit they knew hadn't a clue about the intentions of the man who challenged David Cameron for the leadership of the Conservative Party a couple of years ago, LibDem Leader Nick Clegg had been informed.

All of which leaves a big question about David Cameron's leadership...


UPDATE: The Three Line Whip blog published this morning at the Daily Telegraph website puts the rest of the day's events in some kind of perspective....

Private firm paid Conway for research, so why did he pay his family taxpayers cash...?

Shamed Tory MP Derek Conway took money from a private company for a researcher - yet paid his son more than £40,000 out of the public purse, according to The Observer.

Catching up on the weekend papers, I spotted this nugget on Conway-gate:

Further questions are likely to be asked about why Conway used public money to employ his sons, Freddie and Henry, and one of their friends as research assistants after it emerged a private company was paying for him to have a researcher. An entry made by Conway in the parliamentary register of members' interests states that 'financial support for a research assistant fees (were) met by Regent Square Estate Limited'.

The entry was made on 26 September 2005. Conway declined to return calls asking him to reveal how much money he received from the property company, the nature of the researcher's work or how long they were employed by him.

But records at Companies House show a company called Regent Square Estates Limited gave £20,000 to the Conservative Party in the year to 30 June 2006.

The Observer goes on to say that much of the money was actually used to fund David Davis's challenge to David Cameron for the leadership of the Conservative Party which orchestrated by Conway.

Unfortunately, these questions - and many more - were not addressed in Mr Conway's withering 'I've done nothing wrong' plea in the Mail on Sunday.