The untidy and expensive message from Haltemprice and Howden

I don't think you can ever discount or ignore people getting off their bottoms and walking to the polling station (or posting their ballot). So 17,113 people voting for David Davis is a fairly powerful message. Having said that, the turnout was 34.5% (Yorkshire Post) which looks fairly ropey when compared to the 50.32 turnout at the Henley by-election just 14 days earlier and the 58.2% turnout at the Crewe & Nantwich by-election in May.

I make it £11.02 per vote. Quite an expensive demonstration.

That's based on the Telegraph's estimate of £200,000 for the cost of the by-election to taxpayers, minus £11,500 being 23 lost deposits (I make it that only the Greens and the English Democrats managed to keep their deposits at over 5% of the vote - the threshold being 1,187 based on a total vote of 23,749). So a net cost of £188,500 divided by 17,113 votes for Davis=£11.02 or £7.94 if you count all the votes. (I am sure I have made a mistake, which will be pointed out to me, somewhere in those calculations!)

Was it worth it? Well, I suppose you have to say yes when there are people denied the vote elsewhere. But it is a fairly untidy message to Gordon Brown. People don't like 42 days detention without trial but do like 28 days in Holtemprice and Howden - is that it? Or do they like Davis and 42 days? Or do they not like CCTV? (In which case why did they vote for Davis when he has presided, as front-bench spokesman, over Conservative councils installing thousands of them?)

Political author David Craig, campaigning against Parliamentary waste and greed, said: "It is completely clear - this was a waste of a huge amount of taxpayers' money which has proved nothing at all."

....Shan Oakes, the Green candidate, said "...the fact this is a Tory stronghold has meant that a lot of people are voting for David Davis even if they don't agree with his views on civil liberties."