David Davis: coalition builder
Were you one of those liberal-lefty types that rallied to David Davis’ banner when he made his pointless and self-aggrandising publicity stunt principled stand over civil liberties last year? Your erstwhile leader thinks you’re a coward and an appeaser…
“If we had relied on Guardian-reading vegetarians to defend liberty,” he reckoned, “we’d all be speaking German.”
One of course wonders how many gin-swilling Tories joined the International Brigade in 1936. And how many ‘Guardian-reading vegetarians’ will join Davis on his next ego-buffing fool’s errand.
The best response was the first comment to the above piece:
More accurately, if we’d have relied on the Daily Mail’s 1930s editorial stance to defend liberty, we’d all be speaking German.
Posted on October 6th, 2009 at 12:47pm under Civil liberties, Tories
It’ll be fun* to watch him once they get in. Will he try to form a genuine shadow cabinet (as opposed to the Labour one) on the back benches, so that he can step into the breach once Daveybloke falls prey to those who don’t think his policies are close enough to those of the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party? Or will he turn into a sort of Tory Charles Clarke, an alliterative authoritarian scumbag with delusions of kingmakership?
* Fun in as much as anything in British politics will be “fun” over the next few years; which is to say, after a surly masochistic fashion dripping with ressentiment and directionless liberal grief, rather than in any vernacular sense of actually being fun.
The Manchester Guardian was in fact one of the very few newspapers that if not explicitly condemnatory of appeasement, was highly suspicious and critical of it. Davis doesn’t exactly know his history.
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What a total cunt.
(Sorry.)
Guilty as charged. Last year my first reaction was that, Tory or not, Davis was saying the right thing. Luckily, there’s always another, more well-informed, blogger around to point you in the direction of a small, but inconvenient fact. In this case, someone gently pointed out that Davis had previously voted to to increase the detention period from 14 to 28 days.
This year, the with nothing but a new, New Labour-flavoured Tory government to look forward to, I see even sporadic (if rather hypocritical) conversions to the cause of civil liberties and killing ID cards* as a vanishingly thin silver linings around a hugely depressing cloud. That gives me several million more important things to worry about than whether or not DD thinks that liberal lefties are a bunch of appeasing sissies.
*read the small print on that one very carfully – once in government, I suspect that cost and unworkability have more chance of scuppering the scheme than principled opposition from a party newly in power
One of course wonders how many gin-swilling Tories joined the International Brigade in 1936.
The International Brigade wasn’t defending Britain against the Germans.
But, generally, good point.
(What’s the joke about “If it wasn’t for Margaret Thatcher we’d all be speaking German. And French. And we’d be able to do sums.”)
Well, if I remember my history, World War 2 wasn’t originally about defending Britain against the Germans either.
As pointed out at the time it’s a shame no one from the self-styled “left” amongst the New Labour contigent of MP’s (awkward squad anyone?) had the balls to make some kind of stand on the issue rather than leaving the field open to someone from the wrong gang.
Of course, in such an unlikely event, the words “publicity stunt” would never ever be used. But then it’s much easier to go into SWP mode and turn the issue into one of “the wrong gang member” thus diverting attention away from the key issue and scoring an own goal in the process.
Who said student level politics was dead?
On the issue of the appeasement policy towards Germany between the wars I’d suggest a bit more research would unearth the fact that the said policy was championed in the 1920’s by a chap by the name of Winston Churchill.