Anthony Barnett: What do we do now?
Anthony Barnett
Tuesday July 1 2008
Our Kingdom
We are at a potentially historic moment in British politics. David Davis has raised the banner of Britain's liberty in the modern world and is attempting to appeal to the people to secure it. He has gone over the heads of the ruling elite, in parliament, the parties and the media, to take two great issues to the voters: the asphyxiation of our freedom, and the incapacity of our parliamentary system to defend us from it. The by-election he forced on 12 June 2008 with his resignation as Conservative member of parliament and shadow home secretary is only the start of what may need to be a much wider year-long campaign to prevent "42 days" - the length of time the government proposes to grant itself the power to hold detainees without charge in terrorism-related cases - from becoming law, and this will be only the opening round of a profound effort to establish contemporary democracy in the United Kingdom.
Across the network of paid commentators and politicians it was immediately agreed that the action of David Davis was a pointless, selfish, celebrity-seeking gesture. This, indeed, is what they want it to be, as his initiative threatens their monopoly over defining what is important. Whatever brought him personally to his moment of defiance the decision David Davis has taken is profoundly radical: what he was saying from the steps of the House of Commons is that parliament won't defend us because it is corrupted and suborned. It is. The whole of our political class tell us it isn't. They would, wouldn't they.
When he became prime minister on 27 June 2007, Gordon Brown knew there was a problem. He pledged that he would restore trust in parliament. He had done his reading, he seemed to have grasped the depth of people's disenchantment and its constitutional consequences. As a result I had some hope that he would indeed start a reform process that would release public energy and begin to revive British democracy. Instead, he has made it much worse. It is not just the stench of a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to get through 42 days. "Is it right", Diane Abbott MP asked in a strong speech during the debate on 11 June, "that our civil liberties should be traded in such a bazaar? Is it appropriate or right that we should trade votes at the United Nations on the basis of such political pandering?"
David Davis's views on the death penalty and low taxes are hardly appealing to progressives, liberals or the left; a Yorkshire constituency where Labour is third is not best situated for a showdown on the nature of the British state; coming at the summer solstice when parliament will soon take a holiday this is an awkward moment. But even if you think it has been done by the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, you have to decide: is this in any important way your banner too, that he has raised.
I have been surprised at the degree of jealously and small-mindedness towards his action on the left, though mainly from those in political parties. This is one of those potentially shaping moments, which never come at your own choosing, where you need to think in a generous, strategic way. In some of the discussion threads people are saying progressives cannot "allow" David Davis to walk away with the flag of liberty or the ‘issue". But who dropped the flag in the first place? The man matters, but the cause and the potential of the moment matter much more. ...
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