A bad move for the Sun

I don’t trust this Government, the police or the State bureaucracy to discriminate between keeping an eye out for our well-being and spying on us.
Information is power. And the authorities — national and local — have far too much of the stuff already.

The best so far that the Sun can muster in support of David Davis,from Trevor Kavanagh's column this morning and perhaps that lack of support could be significant.

The paper after all have supported the 42 day bill and is firmly behind the idea of ID cards.
Most Sun readers will instinctively support 42 days’ detention without trial for terror suspects if it helps prevent an atrocity on the streets of Britain.
They would accept ID cards as a sensible way of co-ordinating swathes of information already in the public domain if it made life easier as well as more secure.

However the paper up to now has been quiet on the issue.It is now becoming increasingly unlikely that Kelvin MacKenzie will stand in the by election.

Writing in the Independent this morning Stephen Glover observes

it is possible that some other people are about to make a mistake that could surpass Mr Davis's............If they (the Sun)have any sense they will promptly lower it, and go back to what they are best at doing, and have spent their time on this earth doing – producing newspapers.
In democracies, governments do not own newspapers, though they try to manipulate them, and sometimes succeed. For their part, newspapers and their proprietors do not own governments,

Davis-the latest.

Telegraph online are reporting that David Davis is rumoured to have stalled on his resignation so that he ca bring up the subject of civil liberties during PMQ's on Wednesday.

The shadow home secretary had been expected to formally quit today, but has told friends he will not now hand his resignation letter in to the Treasury until Wednesday afternoon.

says the report.

Meanwhile it seems highly unlikely now that he will face Kelvin MacKenzie,Guardian online reporting

executives at the Sun, which MacKenzie originally said might back his candidacy, and owner News International are understood have cooled on the idea and sources said it is unlikely to proceed.
The Sun has not referred to the mooted campaign by its columnist once in print since MacKenzie and Murdoch, the paper's proprietor, discussed it at a party on Thursday night for editor Rebekah Wade.

Over at Conservative Home Davis tells why he quit and starts with a line from History

The Austrian Chancellor Metternich was once told of the death of a rival. "I wonder what did he mean by that?" was his response.
If Metternich were alive today he might have enjoyed a second career as a Westminster commentator. He would certainly have been able to give full rein to his thirst for the conspiracy theory, rumour, gossip and wild speculation. No story need be constrained by the dreary recitation of the facts. Instead, it can be spiced up spectacularly by all manner of guesses, intrigues and sinister motives. Welcome to the Westminster Village circa 2008.

Guido is first off the mark with news that daviddavisforfreedom.com is set to launch tomorrow

The Sun will stand against Davis

With it now unlikely that Labour will put up a candidate to stand against David Davis,this morning brings news that ex Sun editor and Murdoch supporter Kelvin MacKenzie

Appearing last night on Andrew Neil's show last night and on the Today programme,he said that if Labour did not stand he would stand up for Britain's battle against terrorism and subsversion.

Being entirely honest,Kelvin said that both Rupert Murdoch and Sun editor Rebecca Wade has asked him to stand and he was the Sun's candidate.The paper has been the only paper to consistently stand alongside the government over the 42 day issue

Some of the picks from the weeklies

Spectator-Matthew D'ancona on why Boris is the man for the job

Although he admits a personal interest

I write this primarily as a Londoner: someone who has lived in the city all his life (south, north, west, east, in that order), is generally reluctant to leave the place at all, and feels a profound allegiance to what Andrew Neil described in last week’s issue as this ‘21st-century British city-state with the world as its hinterland’.

And in the same journal Kelvin MacKensie on why he is standing as a councillor

It was a strange place for the red mist to descend. A railway car park in the snooty Surrey town of Weybridge. I was putting my £3.50 into the ticket machine when I spotted a notice from Elmbridge Borough Council which told those of us who had the temerity to pay for our parking spot rather than leave our car for free in the street that there was to be an increase from 1 April

.

Dan Hancox writes in the New Statesman that

All is not well at the British National Party. As they seek to secure their first London Assembly member on 1 May, they are being tormented from every side. "Communist-Tory-Labour-Libdem Alliance Reveals its Ugly Face" ran a headline on the BNP website recently.

Not suprisingly Gordon Brown gets a battering

IT IS the sudden and unexpected event, requiring a spontaneous response, that is usually thought to confound Gordon Brown.

says the Economist

Brown must always remain on the side of the working poor says the leader in the New Statesman

The government has not been making it easy to vote Labour with enthusiasm. Never has the divide between the concerns of core Labour voters and those of the media-coached cabinet seemed wider

The Spectator senses the mood on the streets

Spend just a few minutes on the campaign trail for next week’s local elections and it suddenly becomes clear why Labour MPs got into such a mutinous mood.