It’s David Davis who doesn’t want a debate

So David Davis continues his tour of the news channels this morning lambasting the Government because no Cabinet Minister will come and debate with him on 42 days and his widening ‘civil liberties’ agenda. Funny that, because the local Liberal Democrat MEP, Diana Wallis, who also happens to be the President of Haltemprice & Howden local party wrote to Davis the day after his resignation asking for a debate with local Liberal Democrats and, 10 days on, we are still waiting for a reply.

This should come as no surprise because in the years we have fought DD in this constituency he has declined to attend any public debates with other parties. But if we are to believe in the depth of his feelings on civil liberties then local Liberal Democrats in this constituency should have the possibility to discuss with him his views. We’d be interested to know for example why there appears to be some ambivalence on the issue of ID cards, an antipathy to the Human Rights Act and downright opposition to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. And of course he wants hanging.

As the MEP said: “Civil liberties need some form of constitutional and international underpinning which, as a Tory, David Davis has up until now resisted.”

I would put large amounts of money on the fact that Davis will not speak to Liberal Democrats in Haltemprice & Howden before polling day. But, as I say, we shouldn’t be surprised – we know him here. As somebody in the constituency said to me the other day: ‘he is a nasty, arrogant, supercilious man’. Quite!

 

 

News from the frontline of Haltemprice & Howden Liberal Democrats

Last night’s fundraising dinner of Haltemprice & Howden Liberal Democrats saw the burning effigies of Chris Rennard and Nick Clegg, membership cards were ripped up and thrown onto the flames and guest speaker Lembit Opik was forced to flee under a hail of bread rolls. Denied a by-election to fight the right wing thug that is David Davis what else would be expected?

 Actually, of course, none of that happened. The local party, in a very mature way I thought, expressed its annoyance at the process whereby we arrived at a non-contest but accepted that the right decision had been made. I thought David Nolan, our PPC, made a very impressive speech which showed not a hint of bitterness and he was supported excellently by Diana Wallis MEP and by Lembit himself.

Seeing that  Labour is unlikely to put up a candidate, the whole thing is now turning into a farce and those who know David Davis from years of fighting him here in this part of East Yorkshire know just what a vain, egotistical man he is. A sense of this is reflected in today’s papers, not least in the column written by his good friend Michael Brown in The Independent. As somebody said if he really had wanted to make a point why didn’t he say that he would fight Jacqui Smith at the next election?

It leaves aside the question of what Liberal Democrats in the constituency do during the by-election especially if the choice is Davis or assorted nutters, but perhaps we can return to that at some point later. All I think I can say in summary is that although there will be many in party upset by our decision not to oppose Davis, judging from last night’s gathering, the local party in Haltemprice & Howden felt the right decision had been made.

 

 

 

 

Tory Central Office’s fight back in the MEPs expenses row falls rather flat

 

Tory Central Office tried to deflect the heat on their own MEPs in the ongoing expenses row yesterday by getting sympathetic journalists on the Mail, the Times and the Telegraph amongst others to start digging stuff up against other parties including the Liberal Democrats. In what was a rather weedy effort in the end their attack on Liberal Democrat MEPs revolved around donations given by the MEPs to the party over several years according to the Register of Donations at the Electoral Commission. It seems that 7 of our MEPs had made donations to the party. I know that it was Tory Central Office who were trying to agitate this because one of the journalists very kindly forwarded the list when questioning one of the MEPs and at the bottom it had the name of a certain Hayden Allan, Deputy Head of Press at the Conservative Party. Looking at the papers this morning clearly he failed to get the exposé he had hoped for as it seems the donations were of a personal nature.

 

It looks as if the Conservatives will come out of the MEP expenses row worst and one doesn’t have to look very far to see why. There seemed to be a view amongst Tories that it was okay to make money out of the system. This was best expressed in the words of a Conservative MEP Robert Goodwill back in 2000 (now an MP for a Yorkshire seat) when he divulged a particular scam:  he would buy flights to Brussels for £250 and claim the allowance for a full-priced ticket of £500. He said in defence of this: “I can pocket the difference and, as a capitalist, also as a British Conservative, I see it as a challenge to buy cheap tickets and make some profit on the system.” (The Times, 28 February 2008)