Friday, June 13, 2008

David Davis has made a surprise move, resigning his seat in the House of Commons to fight a campaign against the Governments slow strangulation of our liberties. Neat. It is good to see all the pundits caught flat footed.

We can and should applaud his stand. The Government, NuLabour plc., has been ratcheting up restrictive legislation - no demonstrations within a mile of Parliament, remember? - as well as ID cards &c. This is a core Green issue. 42 days has to be a line in the sand.

Yes, Davis is a right - winger. He might be a libertarian. Well, whether he is or not, we have a fair few libertarians in the Green Party.

He may or may not be an ally, but we could be co-belligerents with him on this issue. In WWII Churchill sided with the Soviets against Hitler, despite his opposition to Marxism.

We share with Davis the immediate objective of preventing the 42 days off the statute book. It is a winnable campaign. It goes back to Magna Carta. David Davis has stated a campaign. If Liberty had started the campaign, we would surely have associated ourselves with it.

The FT used the "Mad" word about him. This could be a very serious smear, or it could represent a real problem that Dais has. If he is in fact not mad, the FT should apologise, and if he is, then we should definitely stand against him.

The Green party is debating whether to put up a candidate against him. I favour not opposing him, but the majority seems to be going the other way, dazzled by the possibility that it might be just us (and the Monster Loonies, and UKIP, and Kelvin Mackenzie on the platform debating with David Davis.

Our line would have to be, "We agree with you 100% about 42 days and the erosion of civil liberties, but what about global warming &c?"

Given that Davis will be setting the agenda, and intends to stick to civil liberties all the way, I personally would not like to be the Green candidate pushing the above line.

We shall see.

Meanwhile - well done David Davis for speaking up for the liberties enshrined in Magna Carta.

If there is a platform

1 comment:

Adrian Windisch said...

We can agree with his opposition to 42 days. But he agrees with 28 days, so not a powerful voice for civil liberties. Still his one of the few in the media opposing the govt on this.