Has Davis really won the argument?

David Davis believes public opinion has swung behind him. Maybe, maybe not. Certainly, one opinion poll suggests he now has public sympathy over what he sees as an erosion of human rights. Davis told me on Wednesday that another poll – which has been withheld – gives a similar picture.

But what does the by-election prove?

Perhaps nothing.

1] Haltemprice is only one of 646 constituencies in the UK.

Imagine a different subject: fox-hunting. A by-election on this single issue would give you a totally different reaction if you were in a] Exmoor or b] Islington. It would not be a proxy for a national referendum. Neither was this poll of little over 20,000 folk.

2] No one else was up in Hull giving the counter-argument with both barrels. The government chose instead to pretend to ignore this surreal event.

3] Two-thirds of voters in the constituency didn’t vote. We still don’t know what they think.

4] We still don’t know if those who DID vote did so because they disagreed with the terror bill. Many of them – I was up there on Wednesday chatting to the locals – simply like Davis because they believe he is a good chap.

5] In fact, I spoke to several who said they would vote for him DESPITE his views on 42 days.

Westminster blog

on the UK political scene

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Jim Pickard and Kiran Stacey, FT Westminster correspondents, share the latest news and analysis on the UK's political scene.

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Contact the Westminster blog team: Jim Pickard, Kiran Stacey, Nicholas Timmins, Elizabeth Rigby and Helen Warrell.

The illustrations of Jim and Kiran are by Nick Hardcastle.

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The authors

Jim Pickard joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the Financial Times since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.

Contributors

Elizabeth Rigby, the FT's chief political correspondent, joined the lobby team in September 2010. Elizabeth has worked at the FT for more than a decade and was most recently its consumer industries editor.

Helen Warrell is the FT's UK reporter, covering home affairs, crime and policing. She joined the FT in 2008 and has spent time as a reporter in the Brussels bureau and more recently, editing the paper's Asia coverage on the world news desk.

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