Philip Davies - Tory statist

This is Philip Davies, MP for Shipley, a Yorkshire constituency that includes Bradford. Before his election in 2005, Davies worked at ASDA in Leeds as a Senior Marketing Manager and before that as a Customer Services Project Manager, an unusual amount of real world experience for a modern MP.

Davies has called for Britain to pull out of the EU and NATO, never misses an opportunity to mock political correctness, and has made it his personal mission to pillory the expensive absurdities of the overtly communist Equality and Human Rights Commission. He has also told his Muslim constituents (Bradford is 19% Muslim) to show their loyalty to Britain.

Much to like about this archetypal blunt Yorkshireman, then. But - oh dear - have a look at his article in Critical Reaction in favour of the surveillance state and the police DNA database.

The new coalition Government has pledged to remove the profiles of those individuals on the DNA database who are not successfully prosecuted after three years and to further regulate and possibly restrict Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras. As someone who is a staunch defender of freedom you might think that I would be delighted about these developments. I am not - I am absolutely horrified. The real freedoms which I so vigorously fight for are not going to be enhanced one little bit by these proposals: the first duty of Government is to protect its subjects and I believe that my freedom to go about my daily life without becoming a victim of a crime is under serious threat from these proposed changes.

Sabotaging some of our most technologically advanced crime fighting capabilities will also weaken our ability to catch and punish perpetrators of crimes. This is not acceptable from the public’s point of view and even less palatable to the victims of these crimes, not to mention the undoubted future victims – some of whom the Government will have failed to protect in the name of civil liberties.

Civil libertarians oppose all extensions of (lower case) government to intrude upon and regulate citizens' lives because the state is by nature a predator and must be kept in a cage. After thirteen years of crypto-communist rule, one would have expected a Tory MP to realize that powers granted to the agents of the state for an overtly benevolent purpose will always be abused to pursue other, malignant ends.

Davies expresses the Hobbesian view that it is better to have one big shark - the Leviathan state - than a shoal of piranhas. That view leads logically and invariably to totalitarian dictatorship. As to his view that CCTV and the state DNA database should be protected against 'so-called libertarians' in order to defend 'real liberties', that is straight out of the communist handbook.