BRITAIN:MAVERICK TORY MP David Davis may have walked the Conservatives into a by-election battle with the Sunnewspaper that party leader David Cameron desperately hopes will eventually help him to a general election victory.
Former Suneditor Kelvin Mackenzie was reported yesterday to be "90 per cent" likely to stand on a "national security" platform should Labour decide not to contest the planned by-election in Mr Davis's Yorkshire constituency of Haltemprice and Howden next month.
Mr Davis stunned his party and Westminster on Thursday by announcing his plan to quit parliament and fight a by-election in opposition to the new "reserve power" to detain terrorist suspects for 42 days without charge in some future emergency. As he began preparations for his single-issue "civil liberties" campaign yesterday, the former shadow home secretary suggested Labour would be showing "contempt" for the electorate if it refused to enter the fray.
"If they choose not to take part in this democratic process that I'm talking about, they are going to show that they are ashamed of their own policies," Mr Davis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Frankly it's contemptuous of the British electorate if they do that. If it comes to it and they don't run, I will think that's just another piece of cowardice by Gordon Brown."
Some Conservative critics believe it is Mr Davis who has shown contempt for his own party leadership, while noting that he launched his "very risky" crusade after establishing that the second-placed Liberal Democrats would not fight the byelection.
Mr Brown, meanwhile, described Mr Davis's resignation as "farcical", dismissing it as "a stunt that has become a farce" while revealing divisions within the Conservative Party.
Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman also dismissed Mr Davis as "irresponsible" and said the party would only decide whether to field a candidate once he had actually resigned and the writ for the byelection had been moved. However communities secretary Hazel Blears had earlier said Labour was "unlikely" to contest the seat, leaving Mr Davis with a potential struggle to maintain a serious campaign around his chosen theme of "the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government".
Mr Davis implicitly acknowledged this yesterday when referring to the possibility that the former Suneditor might contest the seat in support of 42-day detention for terror suspects. "If Kelvin Mackenzie wants to come, fine. But let's keep it serious," he said.
Even some admiring Mr Davis's principled stand yesterday proved doubtful that quitting his high-profile shadow cabinet post in favour of a by-election was the most serious way of continuing his campaign against the government's controversial anti-terrorist measure, which faces the near certainty of defeat in the House of Lords.
While supporting him on all the issues, the Daily Mailworried lest Mr Davis's courage might "prove to have been greater than his judgment". The Daily Telegraphsuggested he had made "a brave mistake", while an editorial in The Timessaid however the by-election played out it would be "the result of one of the most egregiously self-serving political stunts in political memory".