Who wants to be Gordon Brown?

The search for a person who will stand again David Davis on the government's position of forty-two days internment continues, with the news that the Labour Party has declined to put up a candidate and Kelvin MacKenzie is now unlikely to run either.

One interesting suggestion is for a Conservative who is in favour of forty-two days to stand, with ConservativeHome's own Tim Montgomerie being suggested. (Blaney's Blarney: A viable opponent for David Davis?) I believe this would result in Tim's expulsion from the party and it could also turn the whole election into a wider debate about the role of ConservativeHome in the modern party, which is not what most people want to see.

But if no major candidate is forthcoming, there is always the possibility of a paper candidature. As I previously blogged in I am seriously impressed with David Davis, in some of the by-elections over the Anglo-Irish Agreement when no-one would come forward to challenge a sitting Unionist (and yes, it was disgraceful that at the time the Conservative Party was not organised and contesting elections there and thus did not put up to defend the government policy, however bad that policy was) a Unionist activists changed his name by deed poll to "Peter Barry", the name of the Irish foreign minister, and stood as a paper candidate in four seats on a pro Agreement platform. Thus voters were able to choose between pro and anti-Agreement options.

So would anyone like to be Gordon Brown for an election?

I also note that someone I'd never heard of before called Andy Burnham, who is apparently the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has managed to get a headline saying Davis 'should fund by-election' (BBC News). Would it be too much to hope for that Andy Burnham is also calling for Gordon Brown to personally reimburse the country all the public money that was spent in persuading enough MPs to support this measure?

These are NOT our natural friends

There's a lot of matters where I am in strong disagreement with Tim Montgomerie but that's what healthy debate does for you. But there's one matter where he and I are very much in agreement and that is the way the fringe nutters in the US Republican Party do so much to damage the cause of conservatism with their rampant bigotry and naieve view of the world. Tim highlights this again in his post CentreRight: The Ann Coulter problem and shows the following picture of car stickers being sold at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC):

Well okay a few are bearable (e.g. "Proud Republican" and "Mitt Romney for President") but the bigotry and personal abuse is such that I almost feel sorry for Hillary Clinton - and that really takes some doing. If stickers like the racist "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for deportation", the homophobic "Republican Women like Men" or the sexist "KFC Hillary Special - 2 Fat Thighs, 2 Small Breasts, ... Left Wing" (or a T-shirt comparing the landmark abortion Supreme Court ruling with the Holocaust) appeared alongside those for any significant British politician, they, their party and the very ideology would be rightly crucified from all sides. That wouldn't be any "liberal bias" (and the US right needs to learn what "liberal" really means), that would be the ordinary, decent humanity of the vast majority rejecting twisted bigotry.

Now you may thing that this is just the product of an extreme fringe. But it's a very popular fringe with Ann Coulter having no remote counterpart in terms of popularity or outspokeness (or the ability to leave Jeremy Paxman gobsmacked) on the right in the UK. Tim is right to clearly and openly distance himself and others from this extremism.