Haltemprice and Howden By-Election Tomorrow – Was It Worth It?

Things have been so busy at the LSE SU, where I am now 1 day away from officially being General Secretary! The outgoing Sabbatical Officers have given us an amazing handover, and we’re raring to go. It’s been 9 meetings a day, plus a trip to Edinburgh last weekend, so that’s why I’ve been so quiet!

Tomorrow is a big day – it’s voting time in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election. It all started weeks ago when David Davis considered the advent of 42 days detention without trial to be such a big issue that he resigned, while 28 days, the death penalty, Section 28, fox hunting and illegal wars that devastate the lives of millions are OK with the former Tory Shadow Home Secretary.

With around 25 candidates in the field, Davis is at a clear advantage. The only real challenge has come from my party – the Green Party – and I’ve documented our candidate, Shan Oakes, and her chances on this blog.

Davis promised a national debate over the issue. He suggested that his resignation would keep it in the headlines and force a referendum on freedom in Britain. This was more about boosting his own profile than actually championing liberty. But it hasn’t quite gone the way he intended it; and it has certainly not been conducted completely on his terms.

The issue has hardly dominated the headlines, let alone the politics news sections. Where it has been in the media, it’s been short sound bites from Davis about ‘freedom’, ‘liberty’ and other empty platitudes, sometimes related back to the campaign, such as when Bob Geldof joined him.

Supporters of Davis, like Ian Dale, quote some poll data, supposedly suggesting that attitudes have changed to match Davis’s priorities. But most of these issues are not comparable to the time before Davis’s ego trip began, and no doubt the general trend against Labour is reflected in people’s responses on a set of narrowly defined civil liberties issues that, again, do not allow for the full extent of the attack on rights that Davis has often colluded in himself. Dale does, however, perceptively comment that, “whatever national debate David Davis has sparked in the last three weeks, [it] will be nothing compared to what is about to come” when it is voted on in the Lords.

Davis sparked this mainly to boost his own profile – but I doubt we are about to see a massive power shift in the Tories towards Davis and their hard right. He is no doubt more popular, but it has not been in the news quite enough to suggest that people care that much. He will probably still end up back where he was – as a senior MP, a Shadow Cabinet member and possibly a Cabinet member – but no further.

Meanwhile, other candidates – including Shan – have struggled for attention, but Shan has been part of not allowing it to all go Davis’s way. The media has not seen this as a debate – because people aren’t that interested – and has thus solely focused on what Davis, the only recognisable name, has said.

Has Davis facilitated the debate he promised? Absolutely not. He’s run away from it, shied away from it and made no attempt to turn this into any kind of referendum on the government’s policy.

That isn’t totally his fault – the Lib Dems were too yellow to run (I’m assured by a Lib Dem insider that this was more to do with local political fortunes than the ‘principles’, unsurprisingly), Labour are in disarray and therefore the by-election has been deprived of the oxygen of tension and drama.

Nonetheless, even if Labour had run, it would’ve only added to the farce – they’d have no change in a safe(ish) Tory seat, especially given their current fortunes.

So the media, Davis and the other grey parties have all played their role in making this by-election seem unimportant.

Shan and the Greens have pursued their campaign in a dignified yet radical way, refusing to accept the narrow limitations of Davis’s self-centered agenda and always seeking to expand the political space that is open to them. If Davis was serious about having a fair fight over the issues, he would have advocated equal spending money, equal resources and equal numbers of volunteers – but, of course, this would have meant he was actually seriously challenged by an excellent Green campaign.

I doubt the people of Haltemprice and Howden feel very liberated, free or happy about the whole thing – Davis is still a typical, traditional grey politician, offering very little that feels new or original.

I anticipate that this will be the Greens’ best ever by-election vote – that isn’t a startling feat, but it shows that we’ve reached out to new voters who wonder what the hell Davis is up to and why it should have to inconvenience them, and feel disconnected and disenfranchised under the current politico-economic system. Where we have been in the media glare – only fleetingly – we’ve used it to highlight Davis’s hypocrisy and open a whole number of issues that he would never dare speak on, lest he speak the truth or genuinely challenge orthodoxy.

A number of lessons need to be learned from this, but was it worth running a Green candidate?

100%, absolutely, yes.

If we aren’t ashamed of our politics, then we should have nothing to fear.