Thursday, June 19, 2008

It wasn't 42 days that did for David, but 42 Old Etonians

Fraser Nelson in the Spectator gives some interesting insight on the full extent of David Davis' disenchantment with David Cameron:

At a dinner party in central London a few months ago, David Davis made an extraordinary confession. He had become disenchanted with David Cameron, he said, and was considering quitting politics. ‘I believe in certain things,’ he said, ‘and I do not believe the next Conservative government will implement them'...

So many theories abound about Mr Davis’s ‘real’ intentions that the most damaging possible explanation — a loss of faith in Mr Cameron — has hardly been mentioned. Their differences over issues such as tax, grammar schools and defence spending are hardly a secret, having been extensively aired during the leadership contest. They were also said to disagree over Mr Cameron’s plans for locally elected police chiefs — Mr Davis asking what a home secretary would have left to do if policing was devolved. Mr Davis ferociously denies any such splits, but anecdotal evidence to the contrary has been accumulating for some time.


....One of his friends says that, ‘It wasn’t 42 days that did for David, but 42 Old Etonians.’ This is an exaggeration — there are no more than a dozen Old Etonians working for Mr Cameron and George Osborne went to St Paul’s. But it is true that Mr Davis operated in his own centre of gravity.

...to use one of the military analogies of which Mr Davis is so fond, this was not his SAS Iranian embassy rescue mission but a one-man Charge of the Light Brigade. Westminster’s reaction is the same as General Bosquet’s at Balaclava: C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. For a political warrior like Mr Davis it is certainly a romantic way to leave the battlefield. But Mr Cameron is now determined that there should be no route back.

Hat-tip: Conservative Home

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