Until his astonishing resignation from the Commons last week, the prospect of David Davis as the next Home Secretary was one of the foremost attractions of a new Conservative government. On a range of issues from prison policy and police bureaucracy to managed migration and juvenile crime, Mr Davis’s instincts have long been excellent.
Since David Cameron’s election as party leader in 2005, furthermore, he acted as a check on the occasional excesses of the Tory modernisers. The ‘decontamination of the Tory brand’ has been a necessary — and highly successful — process. When, from time to time, it veered towards folly, Mr Davis often saved the day, calming the nerves of anxious true-blue Conservatives: the Cameroons might want to ‘hug a hoodie’, but Mr Davis joked that he would prefer to ‘mug a hoodie’.
An experienced former minister and a fine chairman of the Public Accounts Committee from 1997 to 2001, he had the makings of an outstanding Home Secretary in a future Cameron administration.
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