Thursday, June 12, 2008

Is it OK to have principles?

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis resigns his Parliamentary seat to fight a by-election on the issue of civil liberty in Britain, and Michael White in the Guardian plays the sneering curmudgeon; parti pris?

UPDATE

Someone put the text of Mr Davis' speech as a comment to Michael White's piece. Here are a couple of extracts:

This Counter Terrorism Bill will in all likelihood be rejected by the House of Lords... But because the impetus behind it is political, the government will be tempted to use the Parliament Act...
It has no democratic mandate to do this...


... I am just a piece in this chess game.

Folly? Vanity? My eye (and Betty Martin).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whats the betting that the cowards refuse to stand against him?

Anonymous said...

Michael White is, it is generally agreed, a shit.

hatfield girl said...

It's a bad example of indiscipline for Labour. What if old, deselelcted or disillusioned Labour MPs start choosing their own time of leaving, bargaining for post MP position and policy changes to remain in place? Labour could lose any seat in the country at the moment and threaten Brown's regime.

Sackerson said...

JE: I don't think they can afford to concede by default, as I've said on Dizzy Thinks.

DM: Until I found his article on Google News, I'd never heard of the man, not being a Guardian reader; but he's obviously very sure that everyone SHOULD have heard of him. Do you not deplore, as I do, the modern practice of adding a photo or caricature of the journalist to the byline?

I did read the Guardian for a while in the mid-70s, and stopped because there was so much that was interesting that I could never finish it. A few years ago, I tried to re-start but found I couldn't get past the Further-Ed-Lecturer smugness (ditto Prospect magazine). I don't think the change has been all me. Perhaps it's because the first time, the paper was being published during a Labour regime.

HG: ... sparking off riots in the Govt backbenches? Might enliven politics for a while.

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