Will the Real Civil Libertarians Please Stand Up?

This morning, I saw an interview of David Davis given by Andrew Marr. For the BBC’s standards, this was a pretty good interview in terms of testing his reasons for the shock resignation, and it seemed at some points that Davis was genuinely being twisted by Marr’s questions. Though Davis took the politician’s slick route out of most of the questions (and repeated the same tired lines on Sky News later on), his ambiguity was telling on the course of the whole affair.

Who is the real David Davis? He is a member of the Tory hard right-wing, and holds some pretty atrocious political views, which makes me feel uneasy whenever I see him praised by genuine civil libertarians.

David Davis is, amongst other things:

• For the death penalty;
• Very strongly for the Iraq War;
• Against equal rights for LGBT people;
• Against the ban on hunting.

Interestingly, he has apparently “never voted” on parliamentary transparency – strange, given that Davis repeatedly made the point that he felt the ’sanctity’ of parliament had been defiled by Labour’s dodgy dealings with various groups to buy the 42 days vote. Marr countered by noting that parliament has always been the scene of dodgy dealing, which begs the question of why this particular issue at this particular time has led to this particular reaction from this particular Tory frontbencher.

Most significantly, Davis backed 28 days detention, and even admitted that and stood by it in the interview today. Apparently, banging people up without charge for 4 weeks is fine; 6 weeks, and its time for a principled resignation on the issue of, erm, banging people up without trial for too long.

After all, there are plenty of other disgusting initiatives by ‘Labour’ that Davis would be hard-pressed to claim are not worse even than this latest fiasco. The Iraq War has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, created misery for millions more, destabilised the Middle-East and was all based on lies. Why has Davis not resigned on this fact alone, or on the fact that the government refuses to allow an investigation into one of the most important issues of a generation?

Marr was most pressing on the fact that, in under two years, Davis would likely have become Home Secretary in a Tory government, with the opportunity to reverse this decision. Davis was evasive, huffing and puffing away the answer with tired rhetoric about “wanting to take a stand”.

But this is where people are having the problem. He has, it seems, made a personal sacrifice – a pretty big one for a career politician. But has he really thrown away his chance at being on the Tory front bench, or has he taken a gamble that might elevate his standing even further? People have resigned for much worse things before and bounced back. And however much Cameron is angry at this decision, he knows he needs Davis (and the Tory rightists he represents) and Davis needs him. In fact, Cameron might be pleased with this turn of events, given how popular it seems to be for the wrong reasons, and how it allows the Tories to yet again out-flank ‘Labour’ to the left.

Thus the idea that this resignation is principled is ridiculous, but I think a lot of people are still unable to pin down his precise reasoning – meaning that they are quite happy to buy his argument. Of course, sometimes people miscalculate and make mistakes, and I imagine that whatever Davis really envisaged would happen is changing over time, and will change again.

I still think that this is going to damage the government more than it damages Davis and the Tories – at worse, it will damage both parties equally. But just look at the choice for Brown – ‘Labour’ has to decide between whether to run on the issue and surely lose in a safe Tory seat, or back out and be seen as cowardly.

That said, while New ‘Labour’ deserve to be vilified for their recent actions, particularly 42 days, that doesn’t mean we should give them a bloody nose by helping the Tories and Davis’s stunt.

As for the Lib Dems, they show their weakness yet again. Not standing against this Tory stunt is not principled – it is practical. I spoke to a Lib Dem insider who said that they would never run the campaign because of the trajectory of the party in local politics in the constituency. If the Lib Dems were a true party of civil liberties, they could have stood and rejected 28 days and all the other right-wing law and order measures that Davis has put forward as Shadow Home Secretary.

Let’s be clear – Davis’s resignation has brought up a lot of issues, including the wider government agenda. But let’s not confuse the bringing up of issues with this being a move we should applaud. There are many ways to bring up issues, and I think the issue would have stayed around anyway. The only publicity being gained at the moment is for David Davis himself, as all the other arguments are rehashed to a public who are already aware and decided either way.

People are arguing that “it’s the message, not the messenger”. If so, then there are lots of personalities and stunts that “bring up issues”. It isn’t whether the issues are brought up, but how they are brought up that is key. Davis is going to go out and campaign on the fact that 6 weeks is somehow massively different than 4 weeks, so those arguing that 4 weeks are already way, way too much – particularly compared to other countries, even the United States – are going to have a hard time muscling in on the parameters of the debate.

There is talk of a grassroots coalition coming together of genuine anti-authoritarian activists to stand against Davis and reclaim the agenda. I am for this, but would be interested to see who is found to front the campaign. I fear that there is a highly tempting level of opportunism here – imagine the media exposure someone will get if they run in this now. If there is going to be a true rank-and-file movement running, they have to pick someone with a high profile and a low ego, preferably a local campaigner, who should only run if they are adequately resourced to make a splash with the real issues (because the costs of running and getting heavily defeated are perhaps higher than the rewards from the attention gained in doing so) – namely making it clear that, while Davis is right that there are too many CCTV cameras, ID cards are a sham and the country is becoming more authoritarian, we need a real movement for change in the country that opposes authoritarianism with radical community action, makes clear that 28 days is still to much, and opposes war, privatisation, racism and the other aspects of the authoritarian agenda.

Just remember – every time people cheer on Davis, they are cheering on a right-wing Tory and giving credence to his egotistical manoeuvres and his party’s ‘softer’ image. People should enter this debate, but should go much, much further than Davis could ever go.