The Art of Resigning

Our local man, Bob Spink (Castlepoint) resigned from the Conservative Party during the Budget but still only made only a ripple of news. He elected to join UKIP but what else could he do? Resign his seat as well? David Davis (above) has made the curious and almost unprecedented decision to resign his seat in response to the opposition's defeat over 42 day's detention. He wants to stimulate a national debate about authoritarianism over libertarianism. Or so he says. The resignation speech was delivered outside Westminster's St. Stephen's entrance as Mr Speaker had ruled (perversely) it would 'revisit controversial issues' - so what if it did?

The speech included a long litany of Labour Government's "relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms (sic)". It read like a fairly convincing string of rationalisations, cleverly obscuring the underlying motivation. One suspects the spark was Davis's stated commitment to repeal the 42-day detention legislation. It would appear Cameron, as ever, was not willing to be explicit about his Party's future legislative programme. Davis, frustrated by his impotence, took the only action he was able by petulantly resigning his seat. It's like the child at teatime who in a fit of temper declares he is not going to eat his tea. In other words Davis is the only likely loser in this. The early predictions were for him to win very easily or even have a walkover. History suggests he will lose, the public in Humberside may like his 'no nonsense-speak-as-I-find' approach but the electorate don't like voting unless there's a good reason. At present only Kelvin 'Page 3' MacKenzie is considering running but any high profile Independent could slay Davis.