Richards outlines the Westminster argument

Even if you don’t agree with his conclusions, Steve Richards is always worth reading. His article in today’s Independent is a case in point. It largely lambasts the actions of David Davis, but – in doing so – it provides by far the best account of what Richards calls “the unfashionable ‘Westminster Village’ wing of the argument”. It’s an account that Team Davis can’t afford to ignore, as it identifies most of the questions that they’ll have to answer in the run up to this by-election. The most interesting of these – as I see it – is contained in these two paragraphs:

“Similarly, single-issue by-elections are a distortion, the crusading candidate implying that one policy can be plucked out of the air and made the subject of excessive and simplistic attention, when any national leader must address the subtleties of the relevant single issue and give more prominence to other policy areas.