42 Days: Making A Stand

The statement that our MPs are a shower of ignorant, self-serving shower of shits should come as a surprise to precisely no-one. In the aftermath of the 42 days detention vote win, two people particularly stand out to me as colossal wankers: Bob Spink, UKIP's only MP, who seems determined to prove that UKIP are not Libertarian at all; and Mohammed Sarwar, who apparently decided to support the bill after it became clear that his son could take his parliamentary seat. Magic.

And yet, there is one MP who is actually standing up for his political opinions, and his stance on 42 days detention to the people. Yep, David Davis - bullying right of centre (now former) Shadow Home Secretary has resigned his seat to fight a by-election based on the issue of civil liberties. You could argue that this is designed to undermine Cameron, the man who deafeated Davis for the Tory leadership in 2005. That may be a factor. You could argue that this is a vanity exercise - maybe, but vanity is not unique to Davis in the political class of this country. But I don't think anyone can really deny that this is a bold, radical move that is high risk but very effective. I'm with Tory MP Nigel Evans on this one:

"It proves how committed and passionate David Davis is about his politics and the 42-days detention without charge that he is prepared to put his career on the line. We need people of principle. We need people of passion. We need people who are committed to freedoms that people have lost their lives for."

Of course you could argue that Evans could put his seat on the line as well, but let's not worry about that too much today. In David Davis we have a politician who is standing up for what he believes in and is risking his career to fight for what he is right.

I'll watch the by-election with interest, but I'm sure I'm not alone in supporting David Davis in his principled stand. In fact, we should have the fucker cloned, so we can actually have politicians worthy of the honour of being an MP.

UPDATE:

The Libertarian Party has (quite rightly) offered full support to David Davis, and also invited him to join the party. Part leader Partick Vessey said:

"Should Mr Davis find that the party of which he is currently a member does not share his grave and quite justified concerns about the continuing erosion of our precious civil liberties, he would be welcome to join the only British political party for which these issues are a matter of core principle, rather than purely the stuff of sound-bites."

As a former Tory, and as an active supporter of David Davis' bid to become Tory leader, I can recommend LPUK to Davis. He could do far worse than seriously considering the party's invite.