UK Politics
''Cameron pleaded with me''
Published 13 November 2008
David Davis, who resigned from the shadow cabinet to fight a by-election over civil liberties, regrets nothing. Plus read the full interview transcript
For a man who this summer was denounced as “mad” by supporters and enemies alike, having resigned his position as shadow home secretary to fight a one-man crusade on civil liberties in a by-election at his constituency of Haltemprice and Howden, David Davis is in remarkably good spirits.
I’ve known him for more than a decade – we’ve often discussed the sovereignty of parliament, his lifelong passion – and when we met in his Commons office recently, he seemed relaxed; liberated, as he put it, from the shackles of “machine politics” and endless meetings. “It’s been a moderately busy year,” he said, with a smile. “The irony of all of this is that on the one hand the interest in me has not gone down, but the workload has become manageable.”
He is concentrating on the issues that matter to him, notably ID cards and 42-day detention, both of which appear to be on their way off the government’s agenda. But he is determined not to become a “single-issue” politician, and was advised against being so by Bob Geldof on the train back from Hull after his by-election victory.
Instead, he has been looking beyond the parochial limits of Westminster politics, and – having spent the summer reading 25 books and hundreds of reports on Afghanistan – visited the war-ravaged country last month. Sitting under a map of the region, he said: “The point about being in this place is you change history. If you don’t do that, you shouldn’t be here.”
But questions remain over the tensions at the heart of the shadow cabinet that led to his surprise resignation. Publicly, Davis was fighting the government, but less is known about the battles within his own party, especially those he was having with neoconservatives such as Michael Gove and George Osborne, both of whom were, privately, sceptical of any attempt by the Tories to oppose the government on its handling of the terrorist threat.
Davis said: “There was only a single debate over tactics. And that debate took place between David and George Osborne and me early on. And we went through in some detail – 45 minutes, half an hour, which is a long time – in a private meeting . . . ” Osborne was worried about “whether we could be outflanked to the right”. Perhaps, surprisingly, Davis says he had “no idea” about where most of the shadow cabinet stood on the issue. He denies that there was too much tension, describing it as an “entirely proper debate on where the tactical position should be”. But he is remarkably frank about Cameron’s reaction to his subsequent fait-accompli resignation.
“Well, he was a bit surprised, to say the least. He said: ‘Why?’ His first question was why. And I went through it, and he said: ‘Well, I don’t . . .’ [Davis hesitated] ‘ . . . it’s very risky.’ And I said: ‘Yeah, but the risk is all mine, David.’ And he said there is a risk to our lead [in the polls]. I said, no, I don’t think there is. [I said] I think actually you’ll find that the public will respond well to this, and he wasn’t at all sure about that, so there was a difference of view.”
Did Cameron try to dissuade him from resigning? “Yes, of course he did.” How strenuously? “Well, several times during the course of the evening. Leaders don’t have great tranches of time.” Davis went on to describe how a panicked Cameron was repeatedly ringing his outgoing shadow home secretary’s mobile phone. “And he wasn’t the only one.” Who else? Osborne? “I’m not going to get into that,” he said, laughing.
Davis is more self-aware than he has been portrayed about the wider context of his resignation and about how it affected Cameron. “I put him in a difficult position. There is no doubt about that. Here he is, leader of the party, big lead in the polls, and suddenly I come along and rock the boat. A number of my colleagues in the House – not just David – felt, ‘well crikey, this may jeopardise our lead’. Now, actually what happened is there was a poll the next day and our lead increased, but at that point [Cameron] didn’t know that was going to happen.”
Davis repeatedly used the formula that Cameron has “grown in the job”. Is he a “novice”, to use Gordon Brown’s word? “I don’t think so. Tony Blair came to parliament without having done anything as far as I can tell, and is viewed by the Labour Party at least as having been a great prime minister.”
He continued: “People think there are daggers drawn [between him and Cameron] but that is wrong.” However, he has not talked to Cameron “a great deal” since his by-election victory (Labour and the Liberal Democrats refused to contest the seat).
Davis – who said during his leadership contest with Cameron that “we shouldn’t be in politics to defend privilege” – does concede, however, that there are differences of approach: specifically, for example, Davis is not as socially liberal as Cameron. But he accepts that Cameron may be more “in tune” with modern Britain – adding, “in the south anyway”. He says Cameron’s performance has been “pretty good, actually”, and refuses to condemn Osborne over the recent “nonsense” in Corfu.
Although Cameron swiftly ruled out a return to the front bench for Davis – replacing him as shadow home secretary with Dominic Grieve – Davis is proud of having helped the Conservatives to accept a “pro-liberty” agenda. On 42-day detention, he says: “We got fantastic coverage – both news coverage and editorial coverage, in pretty much everything except the Murdoch press.”
Does he think the Conservatives can win the next election with Cameron as leader? “Yes,” he says, without hesitation. Under William Hague’s leadership of the Tories, Davis built up his reputation by being an effective critic of the government from the back benches in his role as chairman of the public accounts committee. Now, once again, he is “enjoying being a backbencher”. Does he rule himself out of another leadership bid? “Pretty much, yes.”
But Davis’s capacity to surprise is unlikely ever again to be underestimated by his fellow MPs. It was a “painful” decision to quit, but he has “no regrets”. Politics is like a “chess game”, he says, as we walk through Portcullis House. “And I always think everything through very carefully before I act.”
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