Anthony Barnett (London, OK): watched Question Time while hopping back at first to Newsnight, where I thought Iain Dale was good against what is clearly going to be the prevailing reaction, that David Davis is 'mad'. Have you noticed that there is a trope now in media discussions where people say about a politiciian that he is "very principled" meaning "ignore him he does not understand 'where it is at'? They did this with Tony Benn. Having almost walked the gangplank in loyalty to this GroupThink, Fraser Nelson at Spectator CH suddenly thought, "hang on", and in an admirable post noted that while the whole of the media establishment sees Davis as bonkers 95 per cent of BBC responses say the opposite.
This is one man against the political class in its full sense, as Peter Oborne defined it, which INCLUDES the media.
The key moment on Question Time was when the tool of the Sun, the carefully sinister George Pascoe-Watson, said he could not understand why Davis had done this "stunt" except for rasons of self-publicity when he could have been Home Secretary in two years time and removed the legislation from the statute book. One knew immediately that had David stayed this would not have happened!
I've commented on the politics of this and where we could go from here in a strong article by Conor Foley over at Liberal Conspiracy. This is what I wrote:
Hello everyone - I’ve been posting over at OurKingdom on this, sorry
you have not been reading it Conor - a great post. I don’t know how
much time we are going to have. I think we should and could launch a
campaign called something like Democrats for David Davis. Giving us
independence of his overall politics but making common ground on the
issues on which he is calling the by-election. it is extremely
important that he used the phrase database state, he rightly sees 42
days as a symbol of a much larger momentum - this is why it is
different from 28 Days. he also grasps that it is about the innocent
and NOT terrorists - see my article on this in OK which sets out the
principles as I see it at least. The battle here is one man against the
political class - a class that includes the BBC as well as the Sun.
They want to make it about narcissism. That’s the kind of story they
know. they hate the prospect of writing about ideas and principles and
even policies that could hold them to account to, and oblige them to
take the substance seriously. It is that corrosive. This is a very
important moment.
